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MR. CHARLES HALLOCK.

An ANGLER'S Reminiscences.

A RECORD OF SPORT, TRAVEL
AND ADVENTURE.

WITH AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR.

BY

Charles Hallock.

"DEAN OF AMERICAN SPORTSMEN."

Author of " The Fishing Tourist," " Peerless Alaska,
"Sportsmen's Gazetteer," Etc., Etc.

Notes and Introductory Chapter

by

FRED E. pond: ("WILL WILD WOOD.")

CINCINNATI, O.

sportsmen's review pub. CO.
1913.

COPYRIGHT. 1918.

SPORTSMEN'S REVIEW PUBLISHING CO.

CINCINXATI. OHIO.

CONTENTS.

Introductory Chapter VII

CHAPT. PAGE

I Record of a Busy Life 1

II Angling Days and Angling Writers 10

III Fishing Jaunts and Angling Associates 17

IV Early Recollections 25

V In the Sunny South 34

VI A Sojourn in Florida 38

VII The Wild West 42

VIII Literary Work and Travel 46

IX Park Region of Minnesota 53

X The Undine Fishing Party Under Fire 56

XI Random Casts in the Land of Lakes GO

XII A Perilous Adventure at Kanawha Falls 64

XIII The Princess and the Salmon 68

XIV Trouting on Long Island — Opening of the Season 74

XV American Angling Literature 78

XVI A June Rise on the Godbout 87*

XVII Anent the Salmon 90

XVIII Let Us Commune Together 94

XIX Arctic Fishing in Subtropical Waters 97

XX The New Dispensation of Fishes 100

XXI Bobbing for Eels 104

XXII Why Fish Don't Always Bite, etc 106

XXIII "Fysshe and Fyssheynge" HI

XXIV "Fysshe and Fyssheynge" (Concluded) 118

XXV Progressive Fish Culture 124

XXVI Record of Life Work for Fifty- Eight Years 127

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Portrait of Charles Hallock — Frontispiece. page

Hallock Castle 11

Salmon Spearing on the Restigouchc 13

Mt. Katahdin from Near Abol Carry 15

Domine Olmstead and Mr. Charles F. Hotchkiss 16

Mr. Walter M. Brackett and Mr. Colin Campbell 18

Com. J. U. Gregory and Mr. W. F. Whitcher 19

Mr. Allan Gilmour and Allan Gilmour's Fishing Camp 21

Flatheads and Prospectors at Kalispel, Mont 23

Early Railroad Train in Florida 40

Mr. Fayette S. Giles and Mr. H. H. Thompson. 47

Fort George Island Hotel 73

Salmon Fishing on the Miramichi River 93

FULL PAGE PORTRAITS.

Isaac McLellan (Facing) 26

Spencer F. Baird " 32

Dr. A. J. Woodcock " 42

Friends of Charles Hallock '. " 46

Dr. W. F. Carver " 50

Wm. C. Harris " 94

Roijert B. Roosevelt " 102

Fred. Mather " 124

Prof. G. Brown Goodc " 126

Charles Hallock Under Ancestral Trees " 132

INTRODUCTORY.

* * *

Charles Hallock's literary career, covering a period of sixty years — beginning
with the editorship of a college paper, "The Scorpion," at Amherst, in 1852— has
been remarkable for wide range, and thorough mastery of each subject. Although
angling has always been his favorite recreation his active participation in other
manly outdoor sports is indicated by the title, ''Dean of American Sportsmen/' con-
ferred by prominent brothers of the guild in recognition of his ability as a practical
exponent of healthful pastimes, and as an author — an acknowledged authority — in
this branch of literature. Turning to the brief autobiography in this volume—-
a classic in its special line — the reader will find some of the salient features of a
life work great in achievement, varied in scope — from scientific research to current
comment on the topics of the day ; from sojourning in the Sunny South to pioneer
jaunts in the wild West and to far-off Alaska — yet interspersed always with pursuit
of the pastimes he loved, with red and gun.

His recreations — like those of "Christopher North" — furnished material for
delightful sketches, standard works, scientific essays. His companions were men
of action — the hardy voyageurs, at home in primitive craft on wild waters, or on
foot along wild trails; ardent anglers seeking adventurous sport on salrnon rivers
and trout streams far from routes of ordinary tourists; scholars and scientists
delving deep in the study of animated nature.

That Charles Hallock is and has long been a recognized force, an accepted
authority in matters pertaining to fish and fishing, science and travel, is evidenced
by the fact that he is an active or honorary member of no less than fifty-seven
clubs and associations, many of these being organizations of national and some of
international scope. His copyrighted books are seventeen in number, and his various
articles in the magazines, sportsmen's journals and daily press would, if collected
in library form, fill fifty volumes of absorbing interest. The condensed summary,
given elsewhere in this work, records the remarkable fact that outside of newspaper
work his occupations and important experiments reached a total of sixtj'-seven,
while his hairbreadth escapes numbered twenty-eight.

As an editor, particularly in his favorite field, he possessed the qualifications to
acquire the full measure of success. His literary style was here shown in its
versatile character, its vigor, and perfect command of the English language. A
valuable adjunct was his world-wide acquaintance with men of mark in sportsman-
ship and the world of letters. He probably knew personally a larger percentage oi
his prominent contributors than any predecessor in the realm of sportsmen's

journalism, with the possible exception of William T. Porter — the honored pioneer,
termed "York's Tall Son," by reason of his personal popularity and his height of
six foot four.

The chronological record of Charles Hallock's literary work gives ample
evidence of his versatile ability as a writer. It may not be generally known that he
has written a number of creditable poems, replete with humor and sentiment, the
most noteworthy of these being "California," an epic illustrating frontier life in the
Golden State ; "New Year's Calls," a parody on "Marco Bozarris ;" the "Legend
of Kill Devil Hole;" "My Briarwood Pipe," and "An Ode to a Nose."

This volume, "An Angler's Reminiscences," first appeare^ as a serial in the
columns of The Sportsmen'.s Review, attracting widespread attention, and the
chapters on fish and fishing — with an autobiography from the graphic pen of the
Dean himself — have been selected to make up a book of interest to all who love
the great out-of-doors and appreciate the classic literature of angling. It is a
worthy companion piece to place on the library shelf with Charles Hallock's "Fish-
ing Tourist," the earliest of his published volumes, issued forty years ago, and will
be regarded as a crowning work of a long life of honorable achievement.

To the writer the task of collecting and selecting the chapters for preservation
in book form proved highly enjoyable, and while minor mistakes have doubtless
crept in, on account of lack of time to carefully collate from the serial in the
Sportsmen's Review, it is hoped the reader will generously overlook the errors
of the editor, or at least place responsibility for these on the writer of this brief
Introductory, who has gathered a boquet of choice flowers — "with nothing of his
own except the cord that binds them."

Will Wildwood.

CHAPTER I.

RECORD OF A BUSY LIFE.

HARLES HALLOCK, editor, author and naturalist, was born in New
York City March 13, 1634, son of Gerard and Eliza (Allen) Hallock.
The family was founded in America when Peter Hallock (or Holy-
oake) located at Southold, L. I., thirteen colonists, led by Rev. John
Young, of Hingham, Norfolk County, England, who landed in New
Haven, Conn., October 21, 1640. He subsequently received from Governor Dougan,
under James H., a grant of 40,000 acres of land lying between Southampton and
Montauk Point. The obituary notice of William, son of Peter, the founder of the
Southold Colony, who died September 30, 1684, and is so recorded, is spelled
Holyoake.

Through his mother he is descended from Rev. Thomas Mayhew, Governor
of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, under a grant from Lord Sterling in 1614.
Of their descendants, one branch became Quakers, and to this Fitz Greene Halleck,
the poet belonged; others comprised among their numbers eminent fighting men,
distinguished in the American revolution and since, both on land and sea. During
the revolution Joseph Hallock fell as commander of a privateer ; William Halleck
commanded packet boats on Long Island Sound ; another William Hallock owned
and commanded a vessel sunk by the English ship Snow, and had two sons,
Jeremiah and Moses, who were also soldiers of the revolution. During the Civil
War many members of the family fought in support of the Union, notably Major-
General Henry W. Halleck.

A portion of Charles Hallock's life was passed on his uncle's farm, at Plain-
held, in a wilderness section of the Green Mountains in Massachusetts, where he
imbibe'd those tastes for outdoor sports and adventure which so largely shaped his
course through life. In those youthful days he occupied a secluded shooting box
on the estate in preference to the farm house, except in coldest winter weather.

Having fitted for college at Hopkins Grammar School, in New Haven, Conn.,
he entered Yale in 1850, but subsequently went to Amherst, where, in 1852, during
his sophomore year, he printed a college paper named the Scorpion. This seems to
have been his first journalistic venture, and the taste for newspaper work then
imbibed, or more probably inherited from his father, who was at that time the
active head of the New York Journal of Commerce, induced him to discontinue his
collegiate course of study early in the junior year and enter the printing office of
his father. There he mastered the rudiments of a journalistic education. Although
not a college graduate, the faculty of Amherst subsequently conferred upon him,
in 1871, the degree of A. B. Extraordinary, the first honor of the kind which it had
conferred. In the spring of 1855 he attached himself to the New Haven Register,
and conducted that paper for a year and a half for its proprietor, M. A. Osborn,
Esq., then collector of the port. In August, 1856, he accepted a salary and one-
sixteenth proprietary interest in the Journal of Commerce, and remained until
September, 1861, when the political troubles threw him out of his chair, but not of
his ownership in the paper, which at that time had increased to about one-tenth.

2 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

During these nine years of his editorial life Mr. Hallock did not confine himself
to office duties. He was constantly on the move, taking trips of several months'
duration at sundry times — first to the Rocky Mountains (a different journey then
than now), then to the Red River country in British North America, next to Labra-
dor, in 1860, when he headed an expedition to view the total eclipse and collect birds
for the Smithsonian Institution, in connection with Elliott Coues, and at other times
to Newfoundland, Cape Breton, and remote parts of Canada, accounts of which
trips appeared from time to time in Harper's Magazine, illustrated by his own
pencil, and which of course earned for him the right to be classed with the magazine,
writers of the period. Of those contributions of his which are annonated in thji'
Harper index, we find : "The Siege of Fort Atkinson (a story of Indian strategy'
on the plains), "The Red River Trail," ''Life Among the Loggers," "Aroostook and
the Madawaska," "Three Months in Labrador," "Wild Cattle Hunting on Green
Island," "The Racket Club," and "Secrets of Sable Island." He also wrote numer-
ous novelettes for the weeklies and a series of western border sketches for the
Spirit of the Times over the signature of "Lariat," exhibiting no especial rriark of
genius, perhaps, but sufficiently creditable for a young man of his age.

During a period of the war, in 1863, Mr. Hallock edited the Augusta (Ga.)
Chronicle and Sentinel, in conjunction with N. B. Morse, Esq., afterwards of the
New York Daily News, running the blockade overland into the Confederacy, and
out again from Wilmington, N. C, to Bermuda by steamer, a graphic account of
the trip and of the Enchanted Isles, afterward appearing in the Galaxy Magazine.
While in the south he published a biographical sketch of General Stonewall Jackson,
fifty-eight pages octavo, issued eighteen days after his death, which was afterward
printed in Nova Scotia, in the fall of the same year, both editions aggregating
10,000 copies. At Bermuda Mr. Hallock edited the Royal Gazette for several weeks
at the request of the queen's printer, Donald McFee Lee, Esq., who was prostrated
with fever. Then he took steamer to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and resided in that province
and New Brunswick some three years or more, contributing to the papers there,
and editing at different times the St. John Courier, the Telegraph and the Huaiorist,
the latter a small weekly satirical journal which he started in St. John. The
Courier was the confederation organ of the Province of New Brunswick, and
contributed much to the consummation of the Dominion, being prompted by Sir
Samuel L. Tiley, Peter Mitchell., R. D. Wilmot, Esq., and other leading politicians
who wrote for it. The Humorist, edited coincidentally by Mr. Hallock, and printed
in the Courier office, was anti-confederation in politics. The year previously he
had published in the Halifax Citizen a series of thirty-seven politico-satirical papers
entitled "Joel Penman's Observations ; or, the Provinces Through Yankee Spec-
tacles," a very successful brochure, whose perspicacity subsequent events have almost
verified to the letter, not only as respects political changes, but internal improve-
ments and commercial relations.

That Mr. Hallock has capacity for other avocations than journalism is indicated
by the fact that he established the first exchange and money office in New Bruns-
wick, subsequently extending the business to Halifax, through a branch office, where
he also became one-fourth owner in the shipping house of Wilkinson, Wood & Co.*
It was his accidental residence in Canada that has enabled him to gain much general
information, which he was able to turn to such good account in his books and in
the Forest and Stream.

RECORD OF A BUSY LIFE. • 6

In 1891 the leading citizens of Northampton, Mass.) headed by the mayor;
Editor C. M. Gere, Dr. J. M. Fay, et al., gave him a public dinner, at which' thirty
plates were laid, each course illustrating titles of books on natural, history and
sport of which he was the author.

In June, 1806, Mf. Hallock's success in business, which was very considerable,
coupled with his income from his interest in the Journal of Comrtierce, which he
still held, and a one-fourth share of the large estate left by his father, who died a
few months previous, induced him to give up business altogether, and he returned
to Brooklyn, N. Y., after five years' absence, and purchased an attractive residence
on Gates avenue. He then devoted his time to traveling and literary labor, appro-
priating several months in each year to visiting remote regions. For one year,
during 1868, he was the financial editor of Harper's Weekly. In February, 1878,
he became an incorporator and director of the Flushing and Queen's County Bank,
New York, of which he was a large stockholder. In the spring of 18^73 he printed
his "Fishing Tourist," a work that has been much commended for its scope and
accuracy, it being a complete guide to the principal salmon and trout districts of the
United States and Canada. In August of the same year he commenced the publica-
tion of a sportsmen's weekly periodical known as the Forest and Stream, a 24-page
journal, now widely circulated in all parts of the world. The. object of this publica-
tion, as announced, was "to inculcate in men and women a love for natural objects,
and, to cultivate a high moral tone in this department of literature." The result, it
is needless to state, has been fully and worthily accomplished, and the founder of
the paper finds his due of praise in thousands of homes where it is read every week.
Few persons have a larger or more extended acquaintance among civilians and army
and naval officers than Mr. Hallock had. Of war vessel salt water acquaintances
he names one hundred and forty. St. Retao, for one, took him to Anticosti, of the
St. Lawrence.

As the compliment in a foreign paper (Die Jagdzeitung, of Eilenburg, Prussia)
indicates, "Hallock's works as a writer entitle him to a world-wide fame; but in
America his services have been, in addition to all this, of a most substantial and
business-like nature. He first formulated the general ideas on game protection,
and pushed the same forward to the present excellent laws on that subject, a work
of love that deserves the highest commendation, for it involved the difficult task of
showing to a republican country the real difference between the aristocratic game
laws of the olden times which were intended for the few grand land owners, and the
modern game laws, which as a part of our civilization protect and breed game for the
reasonable good of all the people."

He was the prime mover and promoter of the International Association for the
Protection of Game and Fish, comprising a membership of 250 of the leading sports-
men, naturalists and fish culturists of the country, with representatives in every
state and territory of the United States and every province of Canada. The design
was to formulate a common law book for the whole of America; but the impracti-
cability of the measure would seem to have been demonstrated in later years, as no
consummation has been reached. In testimony, however, of the appreciation of
Mr. Hallock's endeavors, he has been elected honorary member of something like
thirty-five sportsmen's clubs in various parts of the United States and Canada,
besides some twenty additional hist£irical societies, etc.

Mr. Hallock was also one of the incorporators of the Blooming Grove Park
Association, in 1871, of which he was president and Fayette S. Giles first secretary.
This association owns 12,000 acres of territory in Pike County, Pa., which is appro-

4 • AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

priated to the propagation of game and to hunting the same. It has 200 members
and a large clubhouse and many annexes and cottages. In 1875 Hallock took after
buffalo in the Indian Territory (Nation).

In 1876 Mr. Hallock published his "Camp Life in Florida;" in 1877, his notaible
work, "The Sportsman Gazetteer/ 'a perfect compendium and book of instruction,
which has run through seven editions, and received the encomiums of the press on
both sides of the Atlantic ; in li878, "The American Club List and Glossary ;" in
1880, "The Dog Fancier's Directory and Medical Guide ;" in 1886, "Our New
Alaska;" in 1890, "The Salmon Fisher," besides four volumes of a different class,
including college and family genealogies. Besides book-making he has contributed
constantly to the daily and weekly press in and out of New York, gathered from
commercial, mining and railway sources, by whose influence he had worked. Occa-
sionally he has dipped into poetry, having written some fair poems, humorous and
sentimental, quite a few of which have been printed as far back as 1855.

When in college Mr. Hallock was elected a member of the D. K. E. Fraternity,
and has since filled the honorary positions of secretary and vice-president of the
New York and Washington (D. C.) Alumni Associations. He has held no public
offices.

In January, 1880, he sold his interest in the Forest and Stream to Dr. George
Bird Grinnell, a nephew of Hon. Levi P. Morton, and retired from its management,
greatly to the regret of his constituency. In April following, however, he was
induced to accept a one-fourth interest in the Sea World and Fishing Gazette, a
weekly journal devoted to angling and the commercial fisheries, published in New
York, but his business interests in the far west prevented his devoting much atten-
tion to it, and he may be said to have then practically abandoned the field of active
journalistic labor.

One of the most signal projects which he has yet undertaken was instituted in
1879. It was the establishment of a Farm Colony for Sportsmen, in the extreme
northwestern county of Minnesota, adjoining the Manitoba line. There, in the midst
of the finest game and grain-producing region in America, he gathered around him
many old friends of the rod and gun, and erected a large hotel at a cost of $12,000,
which he hoped would become a stated resort for sportsmen during the summer
and autumn seasons. His location was on the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba
Railroad, and was called Hallock. It is the county seat of a rapidly developing
section. He attempted to place the enterprise in the hands of a stock company
because Jim Hill had frozen his tourists out. His scheme included a sylvan park
of primitive forest, beautified by a winding river, where sportsmen might locate
summer cottages and escape from periodical heated terms, but it failed. Carnegie
would not assist. In 1892, Christmas night, the hotel burned up without insurance.

Altogether Mr. Hallock's roving life, tastes and habits of close observation have
especially qualified him for just such duties as he has thus far imposed upon him-
self; and although desultory and erratic, they have not been without benefits and
usefulness to mankind. On one of his long vacations he attached himself for seven
weeks to a squad of mounted revenue police, under Major Wagner, operating in
the mountains of the Blue Ridge, to suppress the manufacture of illicit whisky, and
a sketch of his adventure, as well as of the contraband traffic, together with valuable
statistical information, was printed in the New York Herald in March, 1878.

One peculiarity of the Hallock family is its longevity, which is possibly scarcely
exceeded. In 1877 this was referred to by the New York Times, and in December,
1879, the Brooklyn Eagle printed a list of fifty-four Hallocks whose average ages

RECORD OF A BUSY LIFE. 5

were 8354 years, and of this number twelve were upwards of 90 years — one, the
grandfather of Major-General Henry Wagner Halleck, having reached the extreme
age of 103 years. At the later date of January, 1911, twenty are reported to
be living above 95.

Charles Hallock's grandfather was Rev. Moses Hallock, of Plainfield, Mass.,
and his great uncle, the Hon. Jeremiah Hallock, of Steubenville, Ohio. His grand-
father, Moses, while he had pastoral charge of the church in Plainfield, Mass.,
taught a classical school in which 304 students were fitted for college. His father,
Gerard Hallock, a graduate of Williams College, broke ground for the founding of
Amherst College while principal of the Amherst Academy.

Charles Hallock was married in New York on September 10, 1865, and had sons
born in 1856, 1860 and 1861, all of whom are dead. His wife's two Wardell uncles
founded the I. O. O. F. (Odd Fellows') in 1819.

In 1900 Prof. Elliott Coues, of the Smithsonian Institution, wrote : "Charles
Hallock, A. M., while not strictly a scientist, has been a member of one or more of
the scientific societies of Washington since their organization, and has filled a unique
and useful position for fifty years as a close observer and discriminating collector
in the field of natural history. Prof. G. Brown Goode, of the National Museum,
once wrote : 'No man can help us like Charles Hallock.' No geographical division
of North America, marginal or intermediate, from the subarctic regions of Alaska
and Labrador to the Carribbean Seas, has escaped his attention, while his sketches
of travel which have appeared in the magazines and leading journals of the United
States and Canada, together with the Forest and Stream, which he established in
1878, and his numerous books, have given him an enviable prominence among
tourists, sportsmen and savants, not often acquired by specialists of his ilk. His
'Fishing Tourist,' published by the Harpers in 1873, was the record of twenty-five
years of wandering through the wilderness areas of the United States and British
provinces, and as long ago as 1878, George Dawson, the eminent editor of the Albany
Journal, and himself an angler of renown, wrote : 'Charles Hallock has written
more and more wisely than any of his contemporaries.'

"As an ichthologist, Mr. Hallock led the van up to the date of his 'Sportsmen's
Gazetteer,' a 900-page volume, which appeared in 1677, that portion of it which
treated of the edible game fishes of America, their synonyms and classification,
being in advance of all other works, and was so quoted by Prof. Theo. Gill, who
assisted the author very materially in his description of the Pacific coast fishes therein
enumerated.

"The Florida peninsula had early engaged Mr. Hallock's attention, and in
1874-5 he fitted out the Ober and Al Fresco (Dr. C. J. Kenworthy) expeditions
to the Seminole country and the west coast, and when his 'Camp Life in Florida'
appeared, in 1876, the citizens of Florida privately, and through the press and public
meetings, acknowledged to the author his substantial services rendered to the state,
so little had been previously written of its geography and resources. In the same
way Mr. Hallock received the thanks of Minnesota in 1858 for his services to that
state. And in 1850 he opened up the Aroostook forest region of Maine to agricul-
ture, through a summer of investigation, and a series of letters to the New York
Journal of Commerce, of which he was then junior editor. The summer of 1860
was devoted to an exploration of Labrador, in company with myself, and from 1863
to 1866 to the Maritime provinces, including Sable Island, the Magdalens and
Anticosti. Mr. Hallock was one of the pioneer prospectors among the Ontario
gold fields. The net objective results of these and many other similar adventures

6 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

appear in the Hallock collection, aggregating a value of Several thousand dollars,
which he donated to the Long Island Historical Society, of Brooklyn, in 1883. In
1885 Mr. Hallock went out to Alaska and wrote up its resources and commercial
possibilities in a work entitled, 'Our New Alaska,' with the subtitle of 'The Seward
Purchase Vindicated,' every word of which has proved intelligently prophetic and
true.

"Not to be prolix in review of a most interesting life history, it may be said
that four signal achievements' of note accentuate Mr. Hallock's record. First, the
Forest and Stream, which has had the effect to elevate the tone and status of sport,
to disparage whatever was evil in popular pastimes, and to make the new woman
possible. Second,, his scheme to seci'^-e co-operative legislation for the protection
of game, and to formulate a code of laws based upon the distribution of species^
and uniform, as far as practicable, in their application to areas having the same
climate and fauna, success to be accomplished through the agency of an international
association for the protection of game, which he organized in 1874. Third, the
incorporation of the Blooming Grove Park Association, in 1871, Mr. Hallock being
its first secretary, and a most active promoter of the finest existing game preserve on
the continent. Fourth, the piiblication of the 'Sportsmen's Gazetteer,' which gave to
the pupils he had trained a passe-partout to health, and a handbook by which they
might stalk the continent of North America, and of which the London Field asserted
that 'a more complete and comprehensive work had proibably never been published
by any sportsman,' a gracious tribute bestowed in the face of the fact thai its own
chief editor, Mr. Walsh ('Stonehenge') had already published in England an
'Encyclopedia of Rural Sports,' and other standard sporting books.

"Briefly, if Mr. Hallock's claim to the gratitude and good will of American
sportsmen rested solely upon his labors in behalf of the preservation and propaga-
tion of game and fish, he would stand deservedly high in the estimation of those
members of the guild who appreciate true sportsmanship, and believe in giving honor
to whom honor is due. In line with this thought it should be mentioned that away
up in the northwest corner of Minnesota, on the edge of what was once the great
Roseau game region, there is a town of 1,200 people bearing his name (Hallock),
which is the county seat of Kittson County, the most progressive municipality in the
whole Red River Valley. He is the father of this town."

The American Field, in 1888, printed the following, according to Dr. A. J.
Woodcock, of Byron, 111. : "Probably there are few sportsmen who are known so
widely by name, and so little by direct personal acquaintance, as Mr. Charles
Hallock. His books and writings have given him prominence in the field of natural
history and sport, and have always been accepted as authoritative in a certain
sense, because he speaks only of what he has observed and experienced, not by
hearsay."

Although socially inclined, Mr. Hallock is more apt to be found in some remote
and unvisited region than at the trap or butts. He is as nomadic as an Arab.
Although interrupted by spasms of business activity and speculative venture, all the
aims of his life seem to have been subordinated to a love of perpetual motion. Like
the cork leg in the song, he is always wound up and going.

Born in afifluence, with abundant opportunity for travel, Mr. Hallock has
extended his wanderings with rod and gun to nearly every geographical division of
the continent. Many of his explorations have been by canoe and saddle, in advance
of settlement and wagon roads. Since 1880 Mr. Hallock has been occupied to some
extent with real estate operations in Minnesota, although his winters are spent in

RECORD OF A BUSY LIFE. 1

Washington, at the National Capitol, in close communion with the -Stnithsonian
Institution and kindred societies, three of which include him as an activie member.

He is as good an all-around editor as he is sportsman. In 1866 Kendall, of the
New Orleans Picayune, invited him to that paper at a salary of five thousand
dollars. Kendall said he wanted a man "who could jump in anywhere."

Referring to Charles Hallock's descriptive powers as a writer, no tribute could
be more convincing than the following lines spontaneously addressed in the year 1901
to the author of "The Bison's Paradise," by Dr. Robert Bell, F. R. S., of the Canadian
Geological Survey, who is probably the best authority in the world : "Your descrip-
tion of Northern Minnesota would be hard to beat. To the mind of one who has
s-een it, as I have, and the same in the Red River Valley in Manitoba, it is a perfect
picture, and makes you imagine you are there again. Yoil can almost feel the wind
waving the tall grass and hear the cries of the various kinds of birds. You must
have a good knowledge of botany, as well as natural history, to be able to describe
the flora of that region so accurately. The whole is a vivid picture of the Red River
Valley as I saw it thirty-five years ago. And at the same time that it is so eloquently
expressed it contains no mistakes." The article was published in the Minneapolis
Journal first, and afterwards in the Springfield (Mass.) Republican.

The following bill, one of the most unique ever rendered to civilized man, was
presented to the state of Minnesota by Mr. Hallock to cover the installation expenses
of his frontier exhibit at the New Orleans Cotton Exposition, in 1884-5:

New Oreans, La., November 10, 1884.
To Samuel E. Adams, Treasurer State Board Collective Exhibits, New Orleans

Exposition:
To—
1 birch wigwam complete. 32 large and small photos of scenery, and

1 Indian baby cradle. portraits.

4 sets squaw frocks and shawls. 3 large maps of Minnesota and Mani-

6 lay figures. toba, sundry properties.

2 rush mats. 3 paddles.

1 birch maple-sugar mokuk. 1 cedar torch.

1 birch maple-sugar mould. 1 ball pitch.

2 mokuks killikinnik. 1 bag seed rice.

1 bundle red willow sticks. 3 sets shaganappi dog harness.

1 old toboggan. 1 Red River cart.

1 leather cariole. ^ '^^ t^^^^-

1 J 2 sets shaganappi ox harness.

1 good canoe. . ° '^'^

, ,j 1 pair snowshoes.

1 old canoe. ,

1 capote.

, . ■ 1 pair beaded flannel leggings.

^ ^^^' ^^»"- 4 pair moccasins.

4 dozen cat-tails. 1 f^j^ j^^^

1 dry hide. 2 nor' west sashes.

2 pitch pine torches. 1 pair corduroys.

3 Eskimo (huskies) dogs at $15 each. 2 store wigs.

Paid for killing dogs, — 1 pair leather (buck) breeches.

Taxidermist work on same. 1 bundle horsehair for 6 wigs.

Received payment, Charles Hallock.

(Mokuk is a bark basket without handle. Moulds are bark cornucopias, which

8 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

are filled with melted maple sugar while inverted, and are carried by a buckskin
thong, which is passed through the point of the cornucopia before it is filled, the
end being knotted so that it will not slip through. When hard the sugar holds it
immovably. Killikinnik is the inner bark of the red willow, which is mixed with
tobacco for smoking. Shaganappi is untanned hide.)

This exhibit was the primitive forerunner of the many better like shows which
have been presented at sportsmen's expositions held in Boston, New York, Chicago
and elsewhere during the subsequent twenty-five years.

It is an interesting fact, attesting Mr. Hallock's mechanical ingenuity, versatility
and general knowledge of backwoods craft and aboriginal belongings, gathered
during his forty years' previous wanderings, that he set up this entire exhibit quite
unaided, carpenter work and all. He set up his tepees, costumed his lay figures,
painted their faces and wigged their heads, made his imitation snow and water
for winter and summer seasons, laid out his wild rice paddock, fitted up his camp,
posed his groups, rigged his dog teams, etc. One group represented squaws in
canoe beating out wild rice in situ ; another two Indians in canoe spearing fish.
There was a home camp with squaws and papoose in standing cradle ; a Canadian
traveling cariole with fur-clad occupant and driver behind on snowshoes ; a tepee
with its furniture, fire and primitive cooking apparatus; a Red River cart from
Northwestern Minnesota, peculiar to the fur trade half a century ago. Of the
quality of this primitive exhibit, it may be remarked of the figures in the fishing
canoe that they were so close to life that they engaged the discussion of a Mississippi
"cracker" and his wife, who finally settled the question by prodding the spearman
with the point of a cotton umbrella to see if the figure was real. As a droll
sequence to this episode they afterward tested the livitig group of the dignified Gall,
wife and son (who formed part of the Dakota exhibit), in 'the same way, with a
recklessness which would have cost them their hair had the contretemps occurred
on their native prairie a few years sooner.

Associated with Mr. Hallock's exhibit was a reproduction of Minnehaha Falls
in real water, about half size, by Prof. N. H. Winchell, of the Minnesota University.
The whole was viewed with great interest, and elicited a full meed of praise from
the newspapers of the period.

The Dean of American Sportsmen.

"Honor to whom honor is due" should be the motto of every American citizen,
and it is gratifying to note that the devotees of gun and rod, especially those show-
ing keenest interest in the literature of out-of-door sports, show proper appreciation
of services rendered by that distinguished gentleman now recognized as the Dean
of American sportsmen. A Washington correspondent, writing to the editor of the
Sportsmen's Review on this subject, makes the following appreciative comments :

"There is a well-preserved old gentleman, seventy-five or seventy-six years of
age, who is frequently seen in the grounds of the Smithsonian Institution at Wash-
ington during the cooler months of the year, occasionally entering the offices of the
various departments, and any one whose attention is attracted to his presence will
observe that he is everywhere received with a familiar courtesy which betokens
respect tempered with personal regard. Whenever he enters he seems to have a
special errand, though he invariably deprecates intrusion upon busy men in busy
hours. When his mission is accomplished in this or that department, and he moves
to take leave, he is almos-t invariably escorted to the door by the chief of the bureau.
The oldest officials seem to know him best, those of middle age are less demonstra-

RECORD OF A BUSY LIFE. 9

tive, though all recognize him as the dean of the Smithsonian, and he is generaUy 90
regarded. Indeed, the fact is historical that his connection with this institution date^
as far back as the fall of 1860, at which time Prof. Spencer F. Baird, w'ho was then
chief fish commissioner of the United States, did him the honor to look him up at
his residence in Brooklyn upon his return from his collection trip in Labrador in
company with Prof. Elliott Coues, who at that time had just made his maiden trip
in the interest of ornithology.

"Ever since that time Mr. Hallock has been doing gratuitous service for such
departments as his wide field experience would enable him to aid, more especially
in zoology, geology, geography, ichthyology, entomology, biology, enthropology,
forestry and agriculture, and also in the Indian office and weather bureau. At one
time, when Professors Harkness and Eastman were in charge of the naval observa-
tory, he was a frequent visitor there.

"The other day, by request of Cyrus Adler, librarian of the Smithsonian, he
opened out correspondence with Professors Henry and Baird, dating to 1867, and
embodying transactions which will find permanent place in the comprehensive biog-
raphies of those distinguished functionaries which are now being prepared under
the personal direction of their daughters, Miss Lucy Baird and Miss Mary Henry.
The chief of these papers related to the establishment of the Central Park Zoo in
New York, and the installation of its first superintendent under the supervision of
Andrew V. Green and Salem H. Wales, Mr. Hallock selecting the party. There
was also a letter written by Marshall McDonald to Mr. Hallock in 1878, requesting
his influence in establishing his fishway, which he had just perfected. This gentle-
man afterward succeeded Professor Bird as fish commissioner.- Mr. Hallock had
that year started his popular weekly journal, which was at once employed as a
medium of scientific communication by Dr. Theo. Gill, Elliott Coues, H. V. Hayden
and other notables working under the auspices of the Smithsonian, many of whom,
like General Brisbane, the two Schofields, Captain Bendire, Colonel Albert Mallory,
and others, held high official rank in the army.

"Mr. Hallock had many distinguished correspondents in Canada, such as Dr.
Robert Bell, H. G. Vennor, William H. Venning, Moses Perley and other scientists.
He had the unlimited confidence of them all, and this acquaintance througihout the
continent — nearly all of which had been traversed by Mr. Hallock himself during
the twenty-five years previous to 1873 — gave him a wide and powerful influence.

"And this is the reason why this gentleman is honored in his declining years as
he rambles through the grounds of the Smithsonian, which he has been so long
familiar with. We is w«ll preserved physically, has never had serious illness, and
is likely to line up with his ancestors, who have been proverbially long lived. Mr.
Hallock is a winter resident of Washington, but he passes his summers in North-
western Massachusetts, near a little village named Plainfield, in the Hampshire Hills,
where repose the relics of five generations, and where the brook trout bite freely
in the spring. He is there at the present time." — Sportsmen's Review.

CHAPTER II.

ANGLING DAYS AND ANGUNG WRITERS.

"As life runs on the road grows strange

With faces new; and near the end
The milestone into headstones change,

Neath everyone a friend."

Yes, it's up to me ! I have traveled wide, met many people, led a checkered
life, and grown old; and because I have passed seven years beyond the Scripture
limit of three-score and ten, and so survived the majority of globe-trotters who
were contemporaries of my youth and young manhood, I have been deputed to act
the role of "Old Mortality," and repeat his kindly offices by scraping off the
moss which has overgrown their personal records and their memories. So here
I am again, as the clown said when he tumbled into the ring; and in accordance
with the stereotyped fashion of campfire narration, I will proceed to knock the
ashes from my pipe and summon the res gestae of the departed from out of the
nimbus which enfolds the brain. What will be mere gossip to the adolescents
"-•ill be hard-pan reminiscence to the old and superannuated.

And this "reminds me !"

But first let me say a word for myself, how I came to meet up with these
sturdy and weatherbeaten men at arms, who, like Romulus and Remus, were
suckled on the lupine milk of tough experiences; who have tracked the seques-
tered parts of earth ; and followed the blazes through the woods and over the
ledges; and the tide-rips over the seas. It will carry us back quite a little to those
days when residents of New York City got all their water from wooden pumps
at the street corners, when pigs rooted the gutters, and the night watch wore
black leather capes and sou'westers in rainy weather, carried brass stars on their
breasts, and called off the small hours with "All's well !"

I was born a little above Canal street, about the time when it was crossed
by a bridge, but I never fished the Collect Pond, where the "Tombs" stand now,
nor shot snipe on the Lispenard Meadows, but my nurse used to wheel me along
the footpath that meandered diagonally across the Washington Parade Ground
to Sixth avenue and Thirteenth street, and I grew apace on the prosperity which
preceded the great fire of 1835' and the panic of 1837.

With the rake-off from that period of inflation, my thrifty father built him
a replica of Kenilworth Castle, with tower and battlements and retaining wall
on a bluff by the seaside at New Haven, Conn., and there I was nurtured and
grew to my teens; clams at low water and ducks at high tide, dapping in the
full of the moon along the sedge where the incoming waves lapped the mussel-
beds which lined the curve of the beach. In that school of technology I learned
to build a correct fire, and cook shell-fish on iron hoops, as practiced at Coney
Island in the old days when it was only a waste of sand dunes and salt grass,
and Gil Davis was "governor." What would the old man think of the trans-
formation now? What would John I. Snedicor, who ran the Oceanic, and old
man Wykoff say? Wykoff had the only shanty on the island. There were conies
in those days, and striped bass run up the Coney Creek.

(10)

ANGLING DAYS AND ANGLING WRITERS. 11

One learns his salt water kssons early who is reared beside the bright waves
of Long Island Sound. Given a good centerboard lapstreak boat and unrestricted
personal liberty, in ofif hours of boyhood, and there is no better kindergarten for
the angler than its broad expanse and the tideways of its indented shores; and
inasmuch as the greater part of my tuition was acquired at Brooks & Thatcher's
boathouse with the hopeful son of the senior partner as my inseparable com-
panion— unless I chanced to take up with Charles F. Hotchkiss or George H.
Tovvnsend, of East Haven, who were much older men — we two, John and I, soon
learned the caprices of that changeful Mediterranean and all its belongings, and
how to shape the "Teazer's" course accordingly. And John is living yet — at
Minnetonka. We knew every rock, ledge and reef, and every spit, spar-buoy and
spindle from Charles Island to New London.

We made the acquaintance of the light-keepers at Marvin's Point and Faulk-
ner's Island, and were solid with the hotel-keepers at Branford Point, Double
Beach, Stony Creek, Thimble Islands, and Savin Rock. Sam Upson, Malachi

H.MXOCK CASTI.E.

King, and the rest. Once on a July day we made for the land in time to avoid
a thunder, squall which was coming up in a threatening manner. There were
quite a few sailing craft in the offing. Being less prudent than we, several were
capsized, and the "Teazer" ran out snd picked three men, who were strangers,
off the bottom of a yacht that had turned turtle. Some fifteen years afterwards
I happened to be in Savannah, Ga., and was telling the incident to Fred Sims,
of the Morning News, when he exclaimed, "I was one of those three men !"

Charles F. Hotchkiss was a forty-niner, and I saw him start that year in
the brig. Gen. Armstrong, from the end of The Pier at New Haven, for the long
voyage around Cape Horn to San Francisco. There he set up in a tent one of
the hob-nailed iron safes used in those days, and that was the first bank of de-
posit in California. George Townsend was a man of wealth and owned a fine
yacht. Brooks & Thatcher built for the Undine Club of Yale College, in 1851,

12 AX ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

the first college racing boat in this country. Everybody who has been to Minne-
tonka Lake, in Minnesota, within the past twenty-five years, knows of Capt.
Brooks, a quaint man of rare intelligence, of the Walt Whitman type, with
flaxen hair which even now hangs in wavy yellow masses over his shoulders.
That's my mate of the callow days, now in his eightieth year! He went to col-
lege, went to sea, went to ranching in Texas, went to Africa and the South Sea
Islands, and came back tatooed from head to foot ; an ivy wreath of India ink
around his neck, a grapevine twined around one leg and a black snake around
the other; coats-of-arms on his breasts; female figures on his back where he
cannot see them; devices on his arms, and only his face clear of sepia. Crowds
used to gather at the lakeside to see him give swimming lessons to both sexes
and admire his epidermic embroidery, for he wore merely a "trunk" on the
occasion.

There was good quail and rabbit shooting in the hills around New Haven
in the forties, and I managed to put up a good many birds without a dog. At
ten years of age I potted three quail out of a covey in a ryefield near my father's
house on Oyster Point. This was my maiden shot. Ike Bush was an occasional
companion. We had been hunting back of East Rock one day without starting
a feather, when just before we reached the brow of the cliff, I raised my hand
in' admiration of the marvelous harbor panorama in front, when a bevy of twenty
or more birds whirred up from under our very feet ! Ike went into ecstasies
over the scenery, and I collapsed. He went into business at Norfolk, Va., before
the war, served gallantly for four years in the Confederate army, and died in
Suffolk four years ago at the age of seventy-three.

During those boyhood years we attended Uncle Amos Smith's school, near by
a dingle where there was a noble hardback grove, and a clear spring with water-
cresses and frogs. It fed a salt water creek, where we dipped killies for fish-
bait ; and there we used to run bogs in the summer and ice cakes in winter
after a tidal overflow, becoming so expert as seldom to make a misstep. This
practice made us quick of eye and light of foot, and proved of great service in
after years, especially in river work and handling canoes. On one occasion I
remember in the Adirondack, in 1871, old Steve Turner, my guide (he was sixty
years old then), broke an oar in the Bog River Rapids above Percefield Falls.
The trout were among the rocks and we had been picking them out, though the
current was too swift to save them all. The falls were just a little below us
and 28 feet high, and it would be a bad smash for the boat, and something worse
than wet feet for us, to go over. As the crippled boat swung around with the
current and swept down stream near to a convenient flat rock. I stepped out
lightly, grabbed the boat by the gunwale amidships, and held her until Uncle
Steve could clamber out and make her fast. It was not a great trick to do, but
let me tell you that a babe in the woods in the same pinch would have got rattled,
missed the rock, and trouble would have followed. With a convenient gimlet and
two yards of wire I had the oar spliced in a jiffy, and we pulled up happily out of
the drink. It was my habit always then and afterwards to carry a kit of small tools
with me, which helped me and others less provident out of many a serious diffi-
culty in camp or en voyage, wherever and everywhere about the continent.

My youthful shooting proclivities gave my matter-of-fact father much trouble,
but he was sensible enough to humor my bent. So I was taken out of school at
twelve years of age and sent to my uncle's farm in the Hampshire hills of North-
western Massachusetts for two years and a half, where I became initiated in

ANGLIXG DAYS AND ANGLING WRITERS. 18

forestry and the ways of the woods, and learned the tricks and manners of farm
animals. I could manage the horses and cows and sheep all right, because I
gained their confidence. The same bay mare who slung my uncle across the
stable with her teeth would let me tangle myself up with her legs and hoist
with my back against her belly while I was grooming her; and the "little cow"
allowed me to shoot off my gun between her horns, standing in front of her,
and not flinch.

Later I was taken from Hopkins' Grammar School at New Haven and sent
to Framington, Conn., where I could have a boat and gun and shoot muskrats
on the overflows of the river. From Yale College, which was too artificial for
my taste, I went to Amherst, where I could range Mt. Holyoke and Mt. Tom
and pick up rocks and minerals for my cabinets. And so it went until I grad-
uated, married, and went into business. I was of age.

SPKARI.XG SALMON OX THE RESTIGOUCHE.
Mr. Hallock fished for salmon on this river half a century ago.

But these responsibilities hardly checked my vagabond proclivities. I com-
menced to go west of the Mississippi early in the fifties, and there I first heard of Kit
Carson, Fremont and Jesse, Pierre Choteau, Jim Beckworth, Jim Bridges, Bill Bent,
and Charley Bent, his half-breed son. I read up Ruxton's "Life in the Far
West" in 1846 and W. C. Prime's "Owl Creek Cabin Letters," and "Old House
by the River," Lanman's "Wilds of America," and Rev. John Todd's "Long
Lake" and Chas. W. Webber's "Romance of Natural History" (in Texas),
and Col. Emory's Military Reconnoissance from Fort Leavenworth to San Diego,
Cal., during the Mexican War. All these were contemporary writings, and it was
not long before my old schoolday companion. Bob Stiles, and I came to be intro-
duced to some of the real characters. Bob was the same Maj. Robert A. Stiles, of
Richmond, Va., whose army reminiscences of the Confederate War, entitled "Four
Years with Marse Robert" (Lee) were published in 1903, and who died two years
later after a remarkable life of adventure and hair-breadth escapes.

14 AX ANGLERS REMINISCEXXES.

Bob Stiles obtained leave for us to join Charley Bent's freighting outfit at
Westport, Missouri (now Independence), on condition that we would obey orders
and feed fair, because we were going through the Indian country, and some of
the reds were bad. There were some seventy wagons in the train, and a per-
sonnel of perhaps 120 men, of whom some forty were mounted as a horse guard —
quite a formidable body. We were bound for Bent's Fort, on the upper Arkansas
(now the town of Williams), and were not out many days before we met up
with about 3,000 Comanches and Kiowas — men, women and children, who had
been waiting for weeks at the Great Bend of the Arkansas River for annuities
from a tardy Indian agent, and were a-heap mad. I wrote up the story of that
lively adventure in the October issue of Harper's Magazine for 1857 ; so I need
not amplify here, except to say that to the long category of "Indians I have
met" we added the names of Yellow Bear, a friendly Arapaho, who was with
the Bent outfit, and Chief Shaved Head, of the Comanches, who came near having
his windpipe cut with a cheese knife in Bent's hands, when some of his mounted
warriors came charging down on us too near to be pleasant. The old fellow, you
see, had headed a charge of his warriors the day before, and his pony being
tough-bitted, carried him into our lines without his consent. He proved a valuable
hostage thereafter, and perhaps saved the day for us. Really, we had a running
fight of skirmishing, tactics and maneuvers for twenty miles, which lasted
four days.

The experience, however, did not feaze me, and it was not many months
before I was on the Red River Trail, in Northern Minnesota, with George F.
Brott's party to open navigation between the headwaters of the Minnesota River
and the Red River of the North. That was in 1858, the first year of statehood,
and five years before the famous Sioux massacre. This was many years before
the "Fishing Tourist" (1873) and "Sportsman's Gazetteer" (1877) brought the
angling literature of America to its climax, and was so attested by Baird, Gill
and Jordan at the time.

How comprehensive and aptly Mr. Roosevelt's history has been presented in
bibliography may be ascertained by reference to the columns of the London Field
(three papers) for June and July, 1887, under the title of "Angling Literature
of America," above given. The compiler, in his review of the period indicated,
submits to reviewers that "nothing like a comprehensive manual of angling was
published until 1864, when Thad. Norris' 'American Angler's Book' and Robert
B. Roosevelt's 'Game Fish of the North' both came out."

That was during the year of the first lease of a Canadian salmon river, the
Nepisiguit. Roosevelt's book made especial reference to that famous stream in
its chapter on salmon fishing, itself a new revelation to the fraternity of fisher-
men. How to fish for salmon, the implements to be used, and a description of
the sport, had never been presented before. The volume was a godsend to anglers,
for it included the technology of angling, fly-fishing, tackle-making, entomology,
fish culture, camping out, etc. It described new devices, new methods, and new
fields of sport which had come into the purview during the sixteen years that
had intervened since the enterprising J, J. Brown had prepared his "American
Anglers' Guide" (1849). Moreover, it introduced to notice new species of fishes
not previously regarded for sport and identified others which had been in doubt.
The whole subject was in chaos at that time, scientifically considered. Experts
had not even quite determined whether a brook trout and a samlet (parr) were

ANGLING DAYS AND ANGLING WRITKRS.

15

the same, or that brook trout were not in fact immature sahiion. The scientific
world has moved since them.

In 1865, the year following his first production, Mr. .Roosevelt put out a
supplementary book, entitled "Superior Fishing," relating chiefly to the fishes of
the Great Lakes. These two books, as well as my ''Fishing Tourist" and Prime's
"I Go a-Fishing" (1873) were all published by the Harper Brothers.

Not only must Mr. 'Roosevelt be recognized as a well-informed author of
undoubted accuracy and reliability, but he was foremost with Agassiz, Baird,
Theodatus Garlick, Ainsworth, Samuels, Prime, Mather, Sage, Seth Green, Slack,
Krider, Norris, Royal Phelps, and other ichthyologists in the promotion of fish
culture and preservation of fish. He was for many years, and up to the time
of his death, president of the New York City Association for the Preservation of
Game and Fi?h, ard wrote many articles on angling and kindred subjects in tho

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■•%

MT. K.ATAHDIX FROM XEAR AI50L CARKV

Visited by Mr. Charles Hallock in 18.S9.

Citizen, which he published in 1850-57. Verily, he is entitled to a leading place in
history, and let the fraternity of anglers freely accord it. Honor to whom
honor is due.

As to Norris: Forty-six years have passed since the first edition of Uncle
Thad. Norris' remarkable book appeared, and of all the cognate emanations which
have subsequently been written, few have been able to add or subtract anything
to materially aflfect the integrity of the work or make themselves of better worth.
I am making no reference, of course, to the transcendent works of the purely
scientific field, in which the scale system, the lateral line, and the hyoid bone play
so important a part. The "American Angler's Book" is today by long odds the
best home book extant upon the broad subjects of which it treats, and this con-
ceded precedence is made obvious by the fact that it is still in print, and that

16

AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

edition after edition has been consecutively made profitable to the publisher. It
is purely an American book for American anglers. There is no "English"' in it.
There is as much diflference between the habitats and habits of the fishes of the
two continents as there should be between the methods and appliances of fishing
for the same, and the angler who would substitute one for the other would be
as likely, if he were a shooter, to hunt for jacksnipe with a rifle in a chapparal.
The field of indigenous angling literature was fallow when Norris entered it.
Lanman, Herbert and Bethune had worked the ground over, and so had Harry

DOMINE OLMSTEAD,
Grammar School, New Haven, 1847

]\IR. CHAS. F. HOTCHKISS,
A New Haven Forty-niner.

Venning, a Canadian, now in his eigthy-eighth year, who wrote with a masterful
pen of the haunts of trout, salmon and land-locked salmon years before. Lan-
rnan's volumes, entitled "The Wilds of North America," which covered almost
the entire survej'ed domain of this continent, and much that was primeval, were
printed in 1845; but to the youth of this country his utterances were as dead
languages then, and never so much prized as now, when long time out^of print.
Norris' book came opportunely, and it has continued opportune ever since. Latter-
day aspirants have written books of positive merit, Louis Rhead in lead, but
the ichthyologists have very properly, doubtless, first read up Thad. Norris. In
order to do full justice to his subject he would hardly be wise to modify or change.

CHAPTER III.

FISHING JAUNTS AND ANGLING ASSOCIATKS.

My preceding chapter, opening this memoir, is not so much a record of my
personal rambles about wild regions and unsettled tracts during the middle of
the past century, as a recollection of sportsmen of an older generation than I
whom I chanced to meet up with from year to year. Reminiscences tossed out
at random bring me up to 1859, when I cast my first salmon fly in the deep pool
below Aroostook Falls, in Maine ; and the rod and reel I used there is now
among the relics of the "Tuna Club" at Catalina Island, in California, where the
chief of all live sea anglers, Prof. Charles F. Holder, is its president. It was
bought at Conroy's, in New York, opposite the Pritchard Brothers tackle shop,
in Fulton street, in 1858. That summer I took in the Grand Stream Lakes, where
Dr. George W. Bethune had his camp at the outlet, with a big party from Houlton,
and afterwards fished at St. Croix River and Sebago Lake for landlocked salmon;
visited Fort Fairfield, of the historic Aroostook War, Fort Kent, and the French
settlement along the Madawaska for sixty miles to St. John River. In 1860 I
went to Labrador with Prof. Elliott Coues, F. S. Knowlton and George Lunt, of
Washington Smithsonian ; caught sea trout and river trout all the way up the
coast from Belle Isle Strait to the Eskimo Bay, latitude 55°, and to the Rigolet
Post, where salmon were plenty and were netted by the Eskimos for the Hudson
Bay Company.

A broad vista opens wide during the lull before the war, about the year
1860, fairly crowded with the names of great men who fished (not great because
they fished!) ; and their deeds — are they not written in many books of chronicles?

During the Civil War rifles took the place of shotguns, and slaughter in the
field at large was done to order. Meanwhile sporting papers of the day were
suspended, with the single exception of Porter's (Wilkes') Spirit of the Times.
After reserving the first three years to the struggle for the Union, I applied the
next three years to a complete tour of the Maritime Provinces of Canada, Prince
Edward Island, Cape Breton and Quebec to a collection of trophies of all varieties
of fauna for the museums from numerous wilds and streams, the results &i
which endeavor appeared duly in my "Fishing Tourist," which was printed by
Robert Rutter in 1872 and issued in the following spring. This diligent old gentle-
man is alive still, and working uptown in New York at the age of eighty
years plus.

The dilettante gunning class, with their hunting dogs, had not yet come into
view, because the era of deadly machine guns had not arrived, and gentlemen
who hunted them were just anglers, who went to secluded waters, and shot birds
and animals only for the camp. Had I the gifted pen of Levant F. Brown, who
finds beauty in every wild, and makes the woods and waters fairly gleam in his
descriptions, eloquent with poetry and song, so that even the birds break out
responsively to his call, I would braid laurels and eglantine for the heroes whom
it is my privilege to name as sportsmen, and whom I have personally known
during that period of my lifetime which I am about to survey. Men like Lanman,
Thoreau, Burroughs, Venning, W. M. Brackett, E. A. Samuels, William C. Prime,

(17)

18

AX ANGLER'S RKMIXISCKXCES.

Reverend John Todd, and a host innumerable, are in the ranks, all aged and
venerable; and who of them all shall take precedence? Brackett and Venning still
live at eighty-seven and eighty-eight years, respectively, and John Burroughs
venerable.

Reminiscences crowd up before me in wind-rows, like the ripening leaves
of autumn, or the rubescent clouds of sunset. Brown himself is one of the
most charming sportsmen, because he is such a nature worshiper. Ardent, and
still not young (indeed, he is what some youthful sportsmen would call an old
man), he could make the dreariest camp environment cheerful with firelight and
a genial presence when the weather failed to brighten. Taxonomically he belongs
to the guild of camera-hunters, like the still more famous George Shiras, 3d,
who hunts the forests for nature study rather than for slaughter. I think that
neither of these men aspire to be classed with the mighty nimrods of the age.

.MR. WALTER M. BRACKETT,
N'enerahle Angler.

MR. COT.IX CAMPBELL.
]'"ainous Angler and llimter.

though I reckon their larders are kept well supplied with the game of the
country. The litter of fish-bones and feathers around their campgrounds attests
to the truth of this surmise. And there are others. H. W. Herbert, better known
as "Frank Forester" : Genio C. Scott, a noted angler, and writer for Porter's
■'Spirit of the Times"; old man Durivage, the author, who lived to be eighty-odd
(all of them my acquaintances) ; J. V. Hayes, one of the first secretaries of the
New York Sportsman's Club; Charles Astor Bristed ("Carl Benson"), who
fell in love with "Dodo," author of "Kismet" and daughter of Rev. J. C. Fletcher;
Charles H. Haswell, the engineer, of New York City, who died in harness two
years ago in his ninety-ninth year; Charles G. Leland ("Hans Breitmann") ;
Marriner A. Wilder, moose hunter; Sam Knox, son of Rev. John Knox, who
tied my connubial knot in 1855, with Amelia J. Wardell ; Col. E. Z. C. Judson ("Ned
Buntline") ; Aaron S. Vail, of Long Island; Stephen Massett ("Jeems Pipes);

FISHING JAUNTS AND ANGLING ASSOCIATES.

19

Thomas A. Logan ("Gloan") ; L. B. France ("Burgeois"), late of Denver; Hon.
Robert B. Roosevelt, Aleck Shewan, and half a score more, of whom only Colonel
James Gordon ("Pious Jeems"), Aleck Shewan, Hamilton Busbey and Chas. Banks
remain alive. Banks was a member of the New York Sportsman's Club of 1858,
two years before me, and is still an active worker in the reorganization of the New
York Association for P. G. and F. We used to meet at the old Sinclair House,
at 754 Broadway, which was torn down two years ago, where the president erst-
while occupied a chair made of elkhorns which was presented by "Grizzly"
Adams, a noted mountain man from the Great Divide, who was contemporary
with Kit Carson, Lieutenant Ruxton, Jim Bridger, et al. P. T, Barnum and he
fell together at the old museum opposite Saint Paul's Church, in New York,
and startling exhibitions were given, to which Daniel and the lions were as
nothing.

COM. J. U. GREGORY..
Celebrated Salmon Fisher.

MR. W. F. WHITCHER,
Veteran Angler.

Then there were Isaac McLellan, who used to do poems for the Journal of
Commerce in the forties, when William C. Prime wrote fishing sketches for the
same paper over the signature of "W.", and his cousin, Samuel C. Clarke ; Daniel
Webster, their intimate hunting companion; George A. Boardman; Spencer F.
Baird; George D. Lawrence, who donated a marvelous bird collection to the
National Museum — all of them eminent naturalists and game seekers, whom I
knew personally and often intimately — now gone the way of all the earth.

And now I devote an extended biography to Com. J. U. Gregory, L S. O.,
whom we may name as the leader of sportsmen of the last half century. He
is eighty years today, living out his honors in quiescence and hope of hereafter.
He is a scion of English, French and New Yorker, the third son of Dr. S.
Gregory, who married a French lady in Montreal, and after a time returned to
Troy, N. Y., his native place, where J. U. Gregory was born and partly educated

20 AN ANGLERS REMINISCENCES.

at the Poughkeepsie Collegiate School. The family returned to Canada when
he was about twelve years of age.

Forty-three years ago he was appointed the representative, at Quebec, of
the Department of Marine and Fisheries of the Dominion of Canada. He has
written many articles on fishing and shooting, and is the author of a book of
travels in French, called "En Racontant." He has been several times appointed
a commissioner by the government, to inquire and report on the condition of the
fishermen on the Labrador Coast, and into the causes of wrecks and casualties
to the shipping. He has shot and fished over the coast of Labrador, below and
above Quebec, and on two occasions in Florida. He was the founder of the
Quebec Yacht Club, of which he is yet the honorary commodore, and also the
founder and president for many years of the well-known Tourilli Fish and Game
Club, Quebec. Mr. Gregory was one of the original stockholders and contrib-
utors to the Forest and Stream magazine, founded by Mr. Charles Hallock.

In his official capacity he has had much to do with the reception of royalty
and other distinguished visitors to Canada, and has a fine collection of valuable
souvenirs from the present Duke of Argyll and Princess Louise, Lords DuflFerin,
Lansdowne and Aberdeen, while governors of the country, also from the Duke
of Connaught, and recently a very valuable souvenir from His Imperial High-
ness, Prince Fushimi, of Japan, who landed in Quebec on his way to Japan from
England.

Mr. Gregory was amongst the first named by King Edward for a companion-
ship of the Imperial Service Order, and received the badge and star which en-
titles him to attach the letters I. S. O. after his name. King George IV is at
the head of the Imperial Service Order.

Mr. Gregory received a gold medal from the Commissioners of the Inter-
national Fisheries Exhibition in London in 1883, and a large reward from the
Canadian government for his services in connection with the preparation of the
valuable exhibits sent from the province of Quebec. Mr. Gregory possesses a
private collection of game birds, as well as sea birds, and also alligators and
other trophies of his expeditions in Florida, mostly shot and preserved by him-
self as an amateur taxidermist. We first met and cast our salmon lines on Jacquet
river in New Brunswick, Canada, in 1867.

Going back no farther than forty-five years ago it is easy to remember that
mine was almost the only salmon rod upon the noble Restigouche, throughout its
majestic length of sixty-miles of superlative fishing grounds, a very different state
of things today, when its broad swims below the Metapedia confluence are
freckled with canoes of guides to club memberships at $1,000 apiece! For two
."successive years in 1865-6 I had it entirely tc myself, barring one Captain Barnard
of H. M. S. "Barracouta," a practice ship, then off the coast, whose guns were
occupied in battering the romance out of the fantastic escarpments from Escuminac
to Tracadigash on Bay Chaleur, — ranging chiefly from the Upsulquitch to old man
Merrill's, from Maine and up to Chane's at the mouth of Tom-Kedgewick's and one
delectable summer I made the acquaintance of John Mowat, the river guardian at
Dee Side. All was solitude between. Occasionally, as the years passed, a stray
rod would find its way to the river from some distant region and Aleck Shewan,
the pedagogue, got into the habit of coming down every season from Montreal and
is still teaching and fishing at the age of 84; and so is Hubert R. Ives, of the
Queens Iron foundry at 79. But there were no accommodations for kid-glove
anglers above Dan Yeaser's hostelry, where he and "Black Aleck," of blessed

FISHING JAUNTS AND ANGLING ASSOCIATES.

21

memory, whom I first met in St. John, in 1864, did the gustatory honors. Gifford
Sanford, Alfred Craven and Neill Haversham, of Savannah, Ga., came there. I
knew them all. The later anglers, when rod privileges of moderate charge began to
be required by the government the leading aspirants of the day, of whom John W.
Nicholson, Sheriff Harding, Ed. Spurr, Harry Venning, were the chief, Jas. Laner-
gun, the actor, Fred Curtis, of Boston, George Jas. Chubb, of St. John, preferred
the Miramichi on the Nipissiguit, as being easier of access. Molson, of Montreal,
.\llan Gilmour and John Manuel, of Ottawa, Ivers W. Adams, of Boston, and half
a dozen residents of Quebec used to go to the Mosie or the
Godbout, and an increasing guild began to select the tribu-
taries all along the St. Lawrence ; Andrew Clerk, of New
York, and his brother, the doctor, chose the Grund of the
Gaspe peninsula. Walter Moody, Wyllys Russell, the hotel
man, Farquhar Smith, Geo. M. Fairchild, all of Quebec, vis-
ited the Jacques Cartier near by, a river which has since
passed into dessuetude, but is likely to be rehabilitated under
judicious handling. I have a list of scores of noted salmon
anglers, but how can I name them all in a limited article?
I knew the most of them; quite a number live yet.

These inimitable wielders of the two-handed wand were
a rare lot, and all live in the memory of survivors. To the
younger fishermen they have passed into oblivion. My
"Salmon Fisher," published in 1890, will describe the rushing rivers and placid
pools as Nature made them. And there are other books of excellence rare.

As a friend of fifty-odd years' acquaintance, I am convinced that the Hon.
Robert B. Roosevelt, who so recently died, has not yet had full credit for the

ALLAN GILMOLK

ALLAN GIL.MOURS 1 rSHLVG CA.MI'.

22 AX an(,iJ':rs reminiscences.

very important part he occupied in the American anglers' guild during his life-
time, especially during the Civil War period, vi^hen the young men of the land,
and old ones, too, were too much engaged on the battle-fields to spare time for
sport, except it were to eke out an occasional deficient ration for the camps by
whatever game and fish could be caught during temporary cessation of hostilities.
Mr. Roosevelt, it seems to me, was the living intermediate who bridged the
interva;l between "Frank Forester" and the writer (if you will allow my claim).

It is worthy of note that the Indians were beginning to be troublesome
already, but were not bad. I had already bought a share of Beldon & Young's
addition to the city of Hastings, some twenty miles down the Mississippi
River below St. Paul, and they annoyed us by peering through the windows when
we were at meals. It was not much of a city, and St. Paul itself then had a
population of only 8,000. Only one railroad touched any part of the Mississippi
river, and everything west of it was hostile.

Gen. Henry H. Sibley, who used to write frontier sketches in those days for
Porter's Spirit of the Times, over the signature of '"Hal-a-Dakotah," was in com-
mand at Fort Snelling, and that military post and a hay meadow which was
mowed, the cavalry were the only signs of civilization on thai side, excepting the
Indian village of Mendota, where the general made his headquarters in two
stone buildings, which still stand. Franklin W. Steel, Tim Newson, Judge Isaac
Atwaster, tutor of my youth, who died in Minneapolis at eighty-nine years, and Gen.
C. C. Andrews, still living, and since then a general in the army and governor
of the state, were the principal pioneers, and of course, A-1 sportsmen.

There was no end to game in variety in those days, and fine fish, too, right
in the river and lakes all around. It was an ideal country for sportsmen; and
so, when our party of seven started up with a spike team in the direction of
Pembina, 400 miles away, we felt we were footloose and in tall grass. But there
was a good road all the way, beaten hard by the hundreds of carts which brought
down .furs every year from Fort Garry and the Selkirk settlement. But that
story was written up at the time for Harper's Magazine by myself, and I will
only add that when a small band of straggling Indians in the neighborhood of
Sauk River, a hundred miles up, commenced to help themselves freely out of
the cracker box in the tail of our wagon, when trotting along over the prairie.
Aleck Kinkaid, the old pioneer who plotted the town of Alexandria the year
before, crawled back from his seat in front and let the foremost redskin have
it under the jowl with his fist. The blow doubled him up, and he fell limp;
and all the other redskins, who were not used to that sort of tactics, cried
"hough !" and dropped back. It was late in the afternoon and they incontinently
went into camp half a mile down river. In the evening they came up and smoked
\yith us. It was midsummer and the days were warm, and they dressed scantily ;
but every man had his clout and blanket — only that and nothing more. As a rule,
the Sioux traveled mounted, but these were a scouting party, who wanted to
locate a band of Chippewas who were supposed to be in the vicinity of the Crow
Wing Agency. The hostiles got together not many weeks afterward, while I
was there at the Agency, and I saw the head chief, Hole-in-the-Day, drive out
in a buggy over the prairie to the battlefield, where the Sioux got the worst of it.

I went through a good bit of experience that summer; struck a rainy spell
and a freshet in the Sauk River in July; lost all our provisions and part of our
camp stuff in attempting to cross a ford, swamped the wagon in eight feet of
water, half drowned the horses, lived five days on raw salt pork and water-

FISHIXC, JALXTS AND ANGLIXG ASSOCIATllS.

2H

soaked crackers because we had no dry powder, nor matches, nor any fuel to
cook with ; hadn't a dry stitch of clothing or bedding all that time, and didn't
meet a living soul outside of mosquitoes. We got up as far as Fort Ripley in
a bad plight, and the soldiers took us in and recruited us— but not for the army !
By the time I reached Chicago in the fall, going East, I was exploited as a great
explorer and made guest of honor at John B. Drake's fourth annual game dinner,
given at the Briggs House. This was in 1858.

At that early date migrants from the East had not begun to meet up with
incomers from the West. The tide was still westward. Chicago was in embryo.

I..\'1IIF.AI).S A.\l) I'kO.Sl'KL r(.K.S AT KALLSl'KI-. .M().\ r.\.\.\.

Her streets were higgledy-piggledy, three steps up and two down, here a rise and
there a level. Grade had not been established; and when I appeared in town in
my soiled and weather-stained prairie costume, the townspeople who had never
been any further West took me for a sort of Kit Carson, a Pathfinder, and the
enterprising Mr. Drake presented me to his table guests en grande tenue, just as
I was. Subsequently this genial landlord opened the Grand Pacific Hotel, and
ran it for thirty years, keeping up the game dinners all the while until he died,
and the hotel was replaced by a skyscraper. I happen to have kept the menu
card of his twenty-first dinner, at which I was also present, and reproduce it

21 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

here. It is interesting to sportsmen to show how abundant game was even
then. It certainly ran the gamut:

JOHN B. DRAKE'S TWENTY-FIRST .ANNUAL DINNER.

Chicago. 1875.

MENU.

Blue Points. Soup — Venison, hunter style; game broth. Fish — Trout, black bass. Boiled —

Leg of mountain sheep, ham of bear, ven'son tongue, bxiffalo tongue. Roas-t — Loin of buffalo,

mountain sheep, wild goose, quail, redhead duck, jack rabbit, blacktail deer, coon, canvasback

duck, English hare, bluewing teal, partridge, widgeon, brant, saddle of venison, pheasants, mallard

duck, prairie chicken, wild turkey, spotted grouse, black bear, opossum, leg of elk, wood duck,

sandhill crane, ruffed grouse, cinnamon bear. Broiled — Bluewing teal, jacksnipe, black birds,

reed birds, partridge, pheasants, quail, butterball duck, English snipe, rice birds, redwing starling,

marsh birds, plover, gray squirrel, buffalo steak, rabbits, venison s-teak. Entrees — Antelope*

steak, rabbit braise, fillet of grouse, venison cutlet, ragout of bear, hunter style, oyster pjp.

Salads — Shrimp, prairie chicken, celery. Ornamental Dishes — Pyramid of wild goose liver in

jelly, pyramid of game, en Bellevue. Boned duck, au nature!. The coon out at night. Boned

qu^il, in plumage. Redwing starling on tree. Partridge in nest. Prairie chicken en socle.

Among the guests was Long John Wentworth, who had been present at the
first dinner, sixty-three years ago.

I doubt if any such bill of fare was ever set up in any land at any period.
The Canadian Camp of our time, in a notable attempt at renascence, made an
extraordinary display of wild meats at its sumptuous dinner two years ago, and
the confines of the earth were levied on; but the selection of viands was not
after St. Peter's choice (Acts x, 11-14) as substitutes for game. The menu
would have delighted the Indians at the Crow Agency, who are natural omni-
phagists, and have a keen taste for miscellaneous comestibles. Chief Hole-in-
the-Day, of whom I was speaking, himself had more style about him. He gave
me his portrait, which is now in the gallery of the Minnesota Historical Society.
He occupied a fairly good one-story house with four rooms, which sufficed to
accommodate himself and his seven wives. Although conforming, to a certain
extent, to civilized ways, he adhered tenaciously to his aboriginal costume and
was more often seen in his flaming red blanket and fancy moccasins than in a
dress shirt. When he gave an audience to visitors of consequence he donned
a war bonnet of bald eagle plumes, and stretched himself out on a lounge in regal
style; each individual feather of said bonnet supposed to stand for an opponent
killed in battle.

Allan Morrison was agent at the time, and Paul Beaulieu, a French half-
breed, was interpreter. Allan's elder brother, William Morrison, piloted Henry
R. Schoolcraft to the headwaters of the Mississippi not many years before, and
Schoolcraft was living at the time. I had a tilt with him in the Evening Post
as to priority of discovery. But William had been trapping on Itasca feeders
since 1808, before him. But official recognition of the headwaters were necessary
for government acceptance, and Schoolcraft won. Beaulieu died eleven years ago
at Leech Lake, at the age of seventy-seven years. He was a loyal servitor, and
raised a full company of bucks and breeds in 1863 for service in the Civil War.
These agency Indians as I saw them, were not fastidious as to diet. On one oc-
casion they hauled a drowned horse out of the river, and fed on the meat with
gusto for several days, as long as it lasted. And yet there was choice game in the
woods, game on the open prairie, and catfish in the river! "De gustibus non
disputando."

CHAPTER IV.

KARI.Y RECOLLF.CIIOXS.

Harking back to my younger days I pick up reminiscences occasionally from
along the trails and thickets of my peregrinations which penetrated far into the
unsettled wilderness of the United States and Canada — so little traversed then by
railroads west of the Mississippi. Introduced names of defunct and disabled
sportsmen I fancy are of no special interest to readers of the 20th century, who
prefer fresh memories which scintillate in the public eye, and besides my memory
fails and my pen drags. However, I call up an occasional chance meeting
from the retrospect, write it for auld lang syne, and kindle it anew around the
smoldering campfire. On my old diary I have 2,500 names, dead and living, of
whom a very large proportion contributed to Forest and Stream in the 70's — all
subscribers, gun shooters, rod swingers and athletes of the baseball field.

Thanks to my stars! I have had my surfeit of all the enjoyment to be had
in the line of sport (fishing and shooting) in days past without money and without
price; free to fish the choicest pools in noblest rivers and enjoying the companion-
ship of my canoemen "for what there was in it," and that knowledge of human
nature and human arts and wiles which we were able to draw from each other,
ignoring caste and despising nothing, roaming the wilds with the freedom of life
untrammeled by anxieties of business and apprehension of dynamite and bad men
who break through and steal. -And let me tell you that my enjoyment of the
present passing days and hours is made up of the consolation of these memories of
past experiences, with the hopes and promises of joys to come in the future
happy hunting grounds. But what the books are made of nowadays are apt to be
like the heroics of T. R., who has recently scoured the chapperals and jungles of
what remains of the prehistoric wilds of Africa, where Baker, Livingston, Stanley
and Paul du Chaillu put in their hunting grounds, whence Paul returned in the
oO's, bringing the head of a swinging club gorilla mightier than the talking
anthropoids of Prof. Gamier of today.

As the venerable Isaac McLellan, who died at 92 years of age in 1893, wrote
with ecstasy, so write I now — albeit homophones — all words which sound alike
but may have different meanings. So I quote :

"Pleasant it is for a traveler after a long day's journey to pause at some
elevated hilltop for rest and retrospection, and to take a comprehensive view of
the route lately traversed. Far as eye may reach, even to the horizon's misty
edge, he sees beneath him outspread like a map, each lovely spot he has visited.
Far off in distant obscurity shines out the starting point of his career ; and even so
can one recall the scenes and events of his early time of youth. All these regions
of resort still survive freshly in the memory of the veteran sportsman, even as the
scenes of the traveler's adventure are present to his eye and mind as he surveys
the features of the natural world, through which he has lately journeyed. Now
brightly are photographed in memory the names, forms and features of those old
friends, who were the associates of the thoughtful sportsman and scholar in the
years departed."

He adds : "My earliest experience with the gun was in wild pigeon shooting,

(25)

26 AX ANGLERS REMINISCENCES.

more than fifty years since. Those beautiful birds were then very plentiful in
New England and I have shot them within a few miles of Boston. They were
then shot by the concealed gunner as they collected on a tall pole, like the old-
fashioned well-sweep. It was usual to bait with grain the ground beneath, and
die flock would gather there for food, first alighting on the pole and then settling
to the feast. This bird had great strength of wing. It was said to travel at the
rate of a mile a minute and it required a good marksman to stop them."

Following him closely in this recital of incidents, now extinct, my venerable
kinsman, Nicholas Hallock, of Ulster county, New York, a lusty fox hunter now
of 84 years of age, called my attention the other day, while we lunched together,
to the sport he had among the wild passenger pigeons in the state of New York
in the 40's, and I claimed to have had some gun practice at the same time ; for
while I was fitting for Yale College at Hart's Classical School in Fanmington,
Conn., the principal kept my percussion cap gun in his study for occasional use
on outings and holidays. I was the only scholar who had the privilege, and I
frequently brought in a bag of pigeons, partridges and quail, which I was obliged
to wade for by fording the canal up to my armpits ; and when the meadows were
flooded in the spring old miller Holt's son and I shot muskrats galore from a
pungj' skiflf. Thousands of the wild pigeons were shot constantly at the trap-
shooting conventions of sportsmen from that mid-century date up to the 80's, or
thereabouts. In those far back 40's the birds were carried in baskets for long
distances on canal boats towed by six horses trotting against railroad time, which
ran not much faster then. They were so roughly huddled together that they so
seriously suffered from long confinement that twenty per cent of them died, and
when the survivors were turned loose at the shooting line they were too tired to
take wing, and so the starters would throw a baseball at them to make them
rise. Such cruelty was insufferable among game and humanity and hosts of
pigeons took flight for the West, making Wisconsin their chief nesting place and
home. I remember taking a trip on one of these primeval canal boats on the
Erie, which was fitted up comfortably with stateiooms for emigrants moving west.

My cousin, Nicholas, resided in Queens county, Long Island, when the
Hempstead Plains were crowded with "fur, fin and feathers." The scrub oaks
afforded cover for deer, quail and foxes. Even today the midland woods and
swamps are almost an undisturbed preserve for forty miles from North Islip to
Riverhead, where I have hunted quail with the Wagstaff boys not far from
Babylon, sixty years ago, on their father's demesne. Both of the now old gentle-
men are taking active lead of the New York Game and Fish Protection, and
ex-Senator Alfred is its president. The South Side Club, with the far-famed
actor, J. K. Hackett, president, was a favorite resort in the 60's, when John
Stellenwerf was chef there before he took charge at Blooming Grove Park in the
70's. Aaron Vail ran a high-class anglers' club at Nort Islip, near where the
deer, foxes and rabbits took convenient cover. The terminus of the main railroad
was just beyond at Farmingdale. Across country, on the south side, Austin Roe
kept hotel for anglers, with his fine trout ponds at Patchogue. David Hartt held
forth at Good Ground, not far away, where ducks dabbled, and down at Fire
Island, where Sammis was landlord, I spent one Fourth of July with the Benson
boys on the Great South bay, and heard Joel Headley make his address in the
evening. Then there were the Maitland, Minell, Massapequa and Maspeth trout
ponds, owned by Wm. H. Furman, Wm. Floyd Jones, Shepard Knapp, Aug.
Belmont and the tobacco Lorillards. all famous fisherm.en in those days gone,

ISAAC McLELLAX,

"THE POET-SPORTSMAN.

EARLY RECOLLEGTIOXS. 27

included in my reminiscences and now buried under ground — ponds and contents,
fish and all. ;..

Those were great days, too, at Conk Vandewater's, on the South Oyster
bay, where the two Judge Bradys and I went sniping on the marshes, and. where
I met Fred Mather one day and carried him papoose back, Indian fashion, with
a pitchfork trident over his shoulder, bearing seaweed representing Neptune
rising from the sea. The Keiths had a marvelous sparkling trout stream, which
ran through the woods, and employed a lusty pugilist to protect the property from
poachers, who used silken nets as fine as hair meshes and set them in darkest
hours. And one night when I was at their shanty with Rev. Jos. L. Duryea, of
Brooklyn, who had driven down the island with me in my wagon, we joined them to
lie in wait for the trespassers. We had already discovered the seines, and laid
by to watch them lift them out. Slyly thev proceeded, and cautiously, arid the
bouncers did the rest.

Down at the east end of the island there are opossums in such numbers as
to be a nuisance, and they are found nowhere else in New England.

From Riverhead west to Islip the unoccupied country is like the plateau
which lies north of Fayetteville, N. C, largely covered with scrub oak interspersed
with pine clumps and scattering pines, and bedded with frequent patches of white
beach sand of ancient deposition threaded by paths running in all directions. Oak
hammocks alternate with swamps, swales and creek bottoms which harbor deer,
rabbit and quail, and with ponds and outlets which abound in trout, bass, perch
and bullheads. Crows, cranes, ducks and bitterns fly from marsh to marsh.
Hawks and snakes keep the rodents and other vermin pretty well thinned out.
Here and there along shore may be found the seine of the fisherman, his fish house
and windmill; clumps of bayberry bushes; sailing craft at anchor; skiifs, punts
and pungeys drawn up on the shingle or nestling among the sedge grass on the
creeks. No less than one hundred steam and sailing yachts go into winter
quarters at Greenport alone. I could fill up my chaptet with Long Island reveries,
and on the spur of the moment I recall that only last summer I dined with C. F.
Creary and David Edgar at their bungalow, while their steam yacht rode at its
anchor before us — recalling how we and Will L. Brooks, owner of the Clytie, of
the New York Yacht Club, spent our winters forty years ago at St. Augustine,
Florida, where we kept canoes for sport at the club house down there. I have a
gruesome tale of how Brooks was run over by a steamboat in the Race near
Plum Gut once upon a time and saved his life in some wonderful way after being
afloat ten hours on driftwood. This reminds me that shooting coots and sea ducks
over decoys outside of surf which rolls' up among the rocks along the coast from
Montauk to Maine, the gunners anchor their boats outside the swells and let their
decoys tail in shore, where the feeders join them among the breakers. The game
is captious, but the combined wave motion makes good aim and gunshot difficult.

Back in the 50's woodcocks probed for angle worms all around the environs
of New York City; perch and sunfish fanned their fins in the collects; snipe
worked the Lispenard marsh above Canal street; striped bass were caught at
McCombs dam below High Bridge; blackfish and canners took fiddlers and crab
bait at Carnarsie, around the wreck of the Black Warrior; tide runners at the
Narrows showed up four-pound weakfish ; sea bass took the hook all around the
Brothers at Hellgate ; and our best sportsmen, like Valloton and Genio C. Scott,
hung up big striped bass at Cuttyhunk on eel-skin squids, and drumfish at
Barnegat and all along Chesquake creek, where fish swam on tides and ebbs.

28 AX ANGLERS KKMINISCPINCES.

Tom Havemeyer went down to Cobb's Island after plover, and to Martin Point
and Back bay, near Norfolk, after ducks and black and yellow-leg waders. Trout
were alive in the Morrisania and Pelhamville ponds and jumped for artificial
flies in the muse-be-written Bronx. Dr. Robert T. Morris, who inherits 300
acres of his ancestors, writes to me that game and fish can be snared and shot
within the metropolis this very day. within seventeeti miles of the Grand Central
depot. And his graphic pen runs in this wise :

"About two hundred acres of mv country place in Greenwich and Stamford
is to be devoted to experimental nut orchards, and I am mailing to you an article
which covers the field of my ambition. The rest of the place is to be kept in
forest, for two reasons. One reason is because I love to have the Adirondacks
within seventeen miles of Grand Central depot, and the other reason is because
the cliffs and swamps forbid agriculture of any sort. There is more than a mile
of the Mianus river on my property, and some big trout there. Take the canoe
out of the barn and go a-fishing any day you please this spring. You can firlld
deer tracks in the sand and flush a partridge or quail along the bank.

"With kindest regards. Yours truly,

"Robert T. Morris."

Dr. Morris is the chief of the advisory board of the Canadian Camp, and Dr.
Lenox G. Curtis leads them all. We older members remember well when Andrew
Clerk, Jim Conroy, Wm. Mitchell, Dingee Scribner, Chas. F. Orvis, the Pritchards,
Welch and Leonard, made the greenheart, ash, lance wood, and split cane rods, for
the anglers, and Dr. J. G. Wood, of Poughkeepsie, cast the longest fly line at
Watertown, N. Y. Orvis is still living at Manchester, Vt., at 80.

But my time is speeding. So I remark in an off-hand way that my first
twenty years were devoted chiefly to the pursuit of knowledge in and out of
school. In my twenty-second year I took my wedding trip with a wife just
married, and took her down the St. Lawrence river, where a lurch of the excursion
steamboat nearly pitched her into the Lachine rapids when she was looking at the
rocks over the side. The notable officer captain Boxer who fought his battleship
off from the Pei-Ho forts in China caught her by her clothes and saved her life.
This was my first acquaintance in Canada, and it goes on to my reminiscences.

"The first time I remember to have been with ladies in camp — for I had been
trained in a rougher school — was in 1S59, when the Rev. Joseph C. Fletcher, who
had been United States Secretary of Legation to Dom Pedro of Brazil, headed a
party of thirteen couples, with guides and luxurious camp appointments, made up.
at Houlton, Me., in the Aroostook country, and went down to the Grand Lake
Stream near Rev. Dr. Bethune's favorite camp at the outlet, to fish for landlocked
salmon. It was during the era of hoop skirts, and when the ladies discarded these
contraptions upon retiring at night and hung them up in the moonlight at the
front of our long, open-faced tilt, they looked like monster spiderwebs. The first
woman adept with the gun that I ever knew was a sister of Gurdon Trumbull,
the artist, of Hartford. She was the wife of William C. Prime, and with her
noted husband was abroad shooting pigeons on the Egyptian Nile from the deck
of a dahabiyeh in 1848. A Swiss lady, the wife of Fayette S. Giles, who was the
first presiident of the Blooming Grove Park Association in 1870-71, together with
the wives of other members, used to make up the female contingent at the Park
hostelry in those days; but they seemed out of place then in a boys' game.
Adirondack Murray encouraged the presence of women in the open woods until it
was charged that the whole New York wilderness was littered with parasols and
bits of lingerie, the jetsam of ladies 'going in.'

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS. 29

Two more little items are worth noticing: One, in 1856, wh«n I came up
from New York to New Haven with Prof. T. S. C. Lowe and his assistant, David
Main, of Calais, Me., in company with their balloon. The same old bag was used
most successfully afterwards in the Civil War. The same astronomer is now in
charge of the Lowe Observatory of California, and doing good service at the age
of 96. Second, it was the same year when my friend, A. B. Keeler, left his clerk-
ship in Wall street, New York, and went into business at Fort Benton, Missouri
river, under charge of the Conrads, where the elk rubbed their velvet horns on
the lodge-pole pines in Judith Basin, and redskins laid low.

In 1858, in July, while I was one of Geo. F. B^rott's party of five, with C. C.
Andrews, Aleck Kincaid and others, driving a spike-tail horse team over the
"Red River Trail" from Minneapolis to Ft. Garry, we m€t a string of 120
shrieking two-wheeled carts, unironed, freighting furs from Selkirk to St. Paul,
and fighting mosquitoes across the prairie in the charge of half-breed Crees, one
to six carts drawn by oxen between the shafts. It was a tough chance in fly-time,
and we all suffered. The animals were rounded up at night and smudged, and
some of us had Bermuda tar and oil for protection. There was no Winnipeg
then. That town was started in 1871.

I spent the summer of 1859 arnong the lumber camps of the Aroostook and
Madawaska, in Maine, and the summer of 1860 in Labrador and Newfoundland,
bringing out the first photos of the interior ever taken, and the camera man, F. W.
Knowlton, is still at the same old stand at Northampton, Mass., at the age of 74.
I wrote up codfishing, cariboo hunting, gnat swarming, and the principal features
along shore and up the great Eskimo bay as far as the Hudson bay posts, Rigolet
and Northwest rivers. During the first part of the Civil War I ran the blockade
by land and water, taking in Nassau and Bermuda, and from 1863 to 1868 I
traveled over the Maritime provinces and lower Canada and their outlying islands,
Cape Breton, Anticosti and the Magdalens (Coffin island included), acting as
correspondent for the Halifax Citizen and St. John Telegraph. Joe Howe, the
"Blue nose" premier, then said that I knew the country better than he did. Much
of what I learned was printed in my "Fishing Tourist," which appeared in the
spring of 1873.

I passed the winters of 1869-70 among the Sea Islands of Georgia and South
Carolina, and the five winters following in Florida, culminating with a book
entitled "Camp Life in Florida." During the ten following summers I was able to
do the Great Lakes, Georgian Bay, the back lakes of Ontario provmce, the St.
Lawrence river and many of its tributaries, Anticosti island, the north shore of
Lake Superior, the Nepigon, the Michigan peninsulas, Mackinac, the knobs of
Pennsylvania, covered by the Blooming Grove Park; the moonshine region of
western Virginia, North Carolina and East Tennessee, the coast highlands and
pine barrens of New Jersey, the interior of New York state and the tide water
regions of Delaware and Maryland. All interior excursions were made with
camping outfits by canoe, wagon and saddle. I used to travel light, excepting where
canoes were required, and never carried a lent until I was 54 years of age. It
was easy to make a camp or "lean-to" if the weather was bad, or to turn the canoe
over for a night's shelter and cover up under a rubber blanket.

And that reminds me of a camp which Colin Campbell and I had at Hamilton
Pool on the Nepigon fifteen years after. Campbell was a born Nova Scotian, and
is now a member of the Lawyers' Club in New York City. He has always been an
expert moose hunter, salmon fisher and mining prospector, and can "endure hard-

% AX ANGLERS REMINISCENCES.

ness like a soldier." He has a place (the old family homestead) at Port Medway,
Lunenburg county, Nova Scotia, arid I think kills his moose and a scbfeof salmon
every year, and so did Mariner A. Wilder kill his yearly moose till he died at 87.
He first introduced me to the Indians, Noel and Saul, who are experts in moose
calling and fly-fishers hard to beat, though John, Manuel and Napoleon Comeau,
Allan Gilmour's river guardian of the Godbout, lower St. Lawrence, have records
which will take the varnish off of any other exploits and scores. But, about the
Nepigon menu! Campbell and 1. had two eighteen-foot birch canoes, with two
paddlers to each; three of them 'Crees and one an intelligent half-breed named
John Watt, whom we procured at the Red Rock Hudson Bay Company's post,
with our outfit and permit to fish. We were looking for mineral, especially silver
ore, and expected to be absent ten weeks. I append a copy of the permit which
was issued forty years ago. It will be interesting at this date, when heads are gray.
No license fee was required :

SPECIAL PERMIT

Granted by Order of the Minister of Marine
and Fisheries to Foreigners.

The holder of this permit, Chas. Hallock, Esq., having duly applied, is allowed
to angle from 26th June, 1873, to 1st October, 1873, in Canadian inland waters,
within the district of the Fishery Overseer countersigning underneath.

This permit is NOT TRANSFERABLE, and requires strict conformity to the
various provisions of the Fishery Laws and Regulations.
Issued at Ottawa, 18th July, 1870.
Countersigned and dated at Red Rock, Lake Superior, Ontario.

M. F. Whitcher, Commissioner of Fisheries.
Jo5. Wilson, Fishery Overseer.

This permit was signed by Robert Crawford, who had then superseded Wilson.
He was a hard-handed but genial Scot, who had such a grip to his greetings that
few cared to shake hands with him twice. I sold him my "Perry rifle," which
was a breech-loading S'Clf-capper, described in one of Frank Forester's books, with
plate, and was a capital tool for zero weather, when fingers were too numb to
manipulate percussion caps. Crawford afterwards went to Ungava Bay post in
northern Labrador, and was succeeded by one Flannigan, who was residing in
St. Paul as recently as 1807. I knew them both. Of the goods which I took
in exchange for the rifle was a pair of Bedford "cords," which served me in good
stead until 1895, in varied stress of wear, until I finally turned them over to a
colored boy in Pollokville, N. C, in that year. We had just come off a wild turkey
hunt near Prettyman's lumber camp. Thirteen years before, when I was a guest
of Capt. George K. Sanderson, of the Eleventh U. S. Infantry, who was senior
captain at Fort Custer, Montana, I had reinforced the leggins with a pair of dress
bootlegs, which made a capital seat for saddle use in many a subsequent ride, of
which the most notable was a seven- weeks' campaign in 1878 with Major Jacob
Wagner, of the U. S. Mounted Revenue Pohce, in Ashe and Watauga counties,
North Carolina ; Johnson county, Tennessee, and Scott county, Virginia. These
counties are in the Blue Ridge, and we three rode 1,200 miles in that time over
"hogbacks" and trails, fishing for mountain trout and hunting illicit stills, of which
we located no less than 164, besides fighting off hogs which would stand us off on
the passes and try to hamstring our horses. We had to shoot one of them to get
past. One of our diversions on that outing was shooting for "beef" with the

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS. :il

mountaineers, but our Springfield carbines proved superior to their Kentucky rifles.
The record of this trip occupied a page of the New York Herald soon after.

Returning to the Nepigon. as before mv long digression: I was saying that
no fee was required from anglers. The monster trout and pike were as free to
our hand as if we owned the royal preserve ourselves. And when we arrived" at
Nepigon House on the Lake, factor Henri Le Ronde and his half-breed son
Charley, who had been educated at Toronto University, showed us a 16-Ib.
speckled trout, which I believe is still the record fish of the species fontinalis.
On July 4 they put up a series of canoe races for Indians, both sexes, and for
twelve, fifteen and eighteen feet craft (one paddle, two paddles, four and eight
paddles), and Campbell and I won in the two-paddle class with a twelve-foot birch.

But bless me ! how long I am getting to that aboriginal menu at Hamilton
Pool. Guests of the Canadian Camp Dirmer at the Hotel Astor would become
impatient by this time, but hardly ravenous, I think, when they saw the viands.
The how of it was this way: Colin Campbell, my angling friend, and I were
enjoying the evening meal which the handy John Watt had put up for us, when
we heard a wrangle in 'the guide's quarter, and went out to ascertain the cause.
We found our three Indian paddlers seated around a blanket playing cards. The
stakes were on the middle of the blanket. It seems that they had trapped a gravid
hare that day, and opened out three immature young ones. These were the prizes
contested for, and each of the players was eager. When the case was decided the
winner raked in his plunder, and forthwith proceeded to spit each one, hair and
all, and toast them over the fire. When all were good and crisp he ate them as
one would bite case sausages, and he was that greedy that he never offered to
share with the others; but Campbell and I did not hasten to be invited.

Ravenous ! I was on my way to the Red river portage, or rather to the
Culebra Cut of that day, which was to open navigation from Red river to the
Mississippi, when I wandered off to the Nepigon, and I only have now to add that
the seventy-foot steamboat, "Anson Northrup," which had been hauled over the
prairie in detail and put together at the entrance of the passage through the
marsh, ready to proceed, was never floated ! Her bones are there yet, and I
believe that Capt. Griggs, of Grand Forks, N. D., who was to take her through, is
also hung up somewhere twixt heaven and earth, if not still living at Grand Forks.
Yet I think that the real pioneer of Red river navigation was Capt. A. E. Maloney.
He brought the first steamboat up in 1872, continued freighting for four years, and
then became proprietor of the "Ingalls House" at Grand Forks. Old Charlie
Cavileer, for a long while in the Hudson' Bay Company at Fort Selkirk, and for
many years postmaster at Pembina, coyld tell us if he were living; but he died
five years ago at the age of 86 or so ; or Bill Moorhead might know, or Nelson E.
Nelson, the old customs officer there for a quarter of a century; or ex-Repre-
sentative Jud La Moure, who started so many towns in the northwest corner of
Dakota Ter. in the 70's, and for whom la Moure county in N. Dakota is now
named. All the parties I have named were pioneer hunters and marksmen of
high order as long as forty-five years ago, or more, but the keenest of all cracka-
jacks in that region is old Cavileer's son Ed, a younger man, who is now post-
master at Pembina, like his father before him. For ducks, chickens, geese and
all the game of the country he has no rival, and his gun or pistol are just as good
as a hammer to drive rails and plug swinging coins. I shot with him often.

It was in August, 1880, that I completed the "Hotel Hallock," on the line of the
Minneapolis and Manitoba railroad, in Kittson county, and we had some marvelous

82 AN ANGLERS REMINISCENCES.

sportsmen there and no end of game at that time. E. W. Jadis, E. H. Fulierton,
Andrew Sammatt, Bill McGillie, a Scotch half-breed, whose father had served the
Hudson Bay Company, the Benson boys and the Carneys were in the lead, especially
for jumping deer, moose, elk, bear and other big game, which was common enough
then. Bands of elk came within a few miles of town; once a moose ran directly
through the village, past the post office ; a black bear came up out of the bottom
to play with the school children at recess ; a couple of pet bears were always kept
on hand for the Swedes to practice boxing on; wolves would tree settlers in zero
days when food was scarce; one winter I had an empty store half full of pelts of
botih timber wolves and coyotes ; prairie chickens nested on the edge of the town.
Out on the Roseau there was a famous nesting place among the reeds for wild
geese, and mallards and teal aflforded good sport. Dean Benson took the Phillips
party out (they were from Penn Yan, N. Y.), and at the end of three weeks they
brought in seven moose, two elks, five deer and seven wolves. This was in
October. The Indians used to bring in considerable game and fish (pike) from
that section, and once a son of Chief Koopenas killed a whisky trader by way of
variety. Another chief named Mikenok had been in the earlier tribal wars and
lost most of his scalp. It is not often that a man lives after losing his "top knot,"
because as a rule he has first been clubbed, shot, knifed or tomahawked.

Judge John Swainson, of Upsala, of Sweden, and I laid out to raise a stock
company for a sportsmen's hotel and game preserve and got a few thousand dollars
subscribed, chiefly from St. Louis people (Col. Hunt and friends), and John
Davidson, of Monroe, Mich., and A. W. Hubbard, of Philadelphia, came up and
shot over the ground, and so did Jim Hill, several times. Andrew Carnegie made
me a call in his private car. But the prospective millionaire declined to help, and
the scheme fell through for want of a brace. The hotel had a precarious record
for twelve years, and was destroyed by fire one Christmas eve. I had no insurance.

But sakes alive ! How I do ramble, sure enough ! I have run fifty years ahead
of my chronology! When I left the trail I was working over a list of sportsmen
I had met in my adolescence and early manhood; and as I hark back memory opens
out a whole galaxy of illuminati whom I met casually in the sanctum of Wm. T.
Porter, the "Tall Son of York," in the 50's, while I was on the Journal of
Commerce editorial staff. I was then contributing some wild west sketches for the
"Spirit of the Times" over the signature of "Lariat," and that is why I dropped in.

Charles Banks was a member of the N. Y. Sportsman's Club in 18-58, two years
before me, and is still an active worker in the reorganization of the New York
Association for Protection of Game and Fish. We used to meet at the Sinclair
House, at 754 Broadway, and the president occupied a chair made of horns, which
was presented by "Grizzly Adams," a noted mountain man from the Great Divide.
P. T. Barnum and he fell together at the old Museum, opposite St. Paul's church,
and startling exhibitions were given, to which Daniel and the lions were as
nothing. Then there were Isaac McLellan, who used to do poems for the Journal
of Commerce when Wm. C. Prime wrote fishing sketches over the signature of
"W." and his cousin, Sam'l C. Clarke; Daniel Webster, their intimate angling
companion; George A. Boardman, Prof. Henry and Spencer F. Baird, of the
Smithsonian ; Robt. Ridgeway, X. Y. Maynard, Edward A. Samuels and his
partner, H. H. Kimball ; Geo. D. Lawrence, who donated a marvelous bird collection
to the National Museum, the latter eminent naturalists and game seekers whom
I knew personally, and often intimately, now gone the way of all the earth.

Lieut. Geo. F. Ruxton, of the English army, exploited all the notable plainsmen

SPENCER F. BAIRD,

FIRST U. S. FISH COMMISSIONER.

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS. 38

hunters and trappers up to the date of his "Life in the Far West." Mountains,
lakes and buttes commemorate their names : Fremont's Peak, Lake Bonneville,
Williams Creek, and the rest. Capt. Jim Bridger wrote up the Yellowstone country
and was classed by incredulous readers with the father of liars. Jim Beckworth,
a mestizo, born in St. Louis, whose whole family had been massacred by Indians
on the plains, got someone to edit his remarkable experiences and put them into
book form. Lieuts. Emory and Geo. M. Wheeler, and Profs. Suckley and Bailey,
all government experts, had followed on the trail of Lewis and Clarke, Pike
Fremont and Marcus Whitman (a pupil of my grandfather), and laid open the
secrets of the Great Divide on both slopes. I suppose it was the perusal of these
books which drew me to the unexplored region west of the Mississippi, which was
marked "desert" on my school map. In 1840 there was not a modern hamlet west
of the Mississippi ; only remnants of the prehistoric civilization in the southwest
and northwest. The Mexican war opened up a part of the southwest and Santa Fe
traders and Forty-niners did the rest. Mormon emigration and the Oregon
colonists laid open the northwest, and the completion of the Union Pacific railroad,
in 1866, let in the riff-raff. After that existence was made uncomfortable for
buffaloes and Indians. My old Pennsylvania friend, Starkweather, had married
a Norwegian girl and moved out from Potter county to the Menominee district in
Wisconsin in 1857, and I fell in with him out there the next year. At the same
time I met up with Dr. W. Frank Powell ("White Beaver"), of the Buffalo Bill
type, at La Crosse, when it was only a steamboat landing and grain warehouse
under the bluff. I also made the acquaintance of Gen. La Due and Banker
Follett, both still living at great age in Minnesota.

The renaissance of the gentleman angler had not yet revived in society. There
had been a hiatus of four centuries since Dame Juliana Berners was Priestess of
the high hook, which even Izaak Walton and Kit North could not awaken into a
furore. This interval was devoted to commercial fishing off the coasts of Green-
land, Labrador, Newfoundland and Sable Island. Nevertheless, there was dear old
William C. Prime, of "Lonesome Lake" in the White mountains, up back of the
Profile House, who wrote effusively of the "Old House by the River" and the
"Owl Creek Cabin Letters," in 1848; and there were others whose advent into the
province of fluvial sport helped to inaugurate a new era. Prime died at East 23d
street. New York, a year ago, at the age of 83, surrounded by his curios and
trophies. It was the last house retained for residence purposes in the block. But
before I go farther I will say that to cover the list of sportsmen whom I have met
during mj' travels through all the states, provinces and territories in the United
States and Canada, from the Arctic belt to the Caribbean sea, and mention them all,
would require perhaps 2,000 names. Of these I have filed autographs of one
thousand. Nevertheless I will begin to shuck out the pile in my next paper, which
I trust will have more red ears than this one.

CHAPTER \'.

IN THE SUNXV SOUTH.

Jotting down my younger wandering trips and travels, one of my first
winters was in 1860, after my return from Labrador, to report the Democratic
convention for nominating the next President at Charleston, S. C. It was an
unfortunate division of delegates, and when the Douglas section was moved to
Baltimore, old Dan Mixer, proprietor of the Charleston Hotel, wrote me a free
railway pass thither via Richmond, Va. As the South stood for Breckinridge, of
Kentucky, I sent a substitute to Maryland while I remained a while down South
to visit some resident Amherst college graduates who were D. K. E. fellow-
members with me in 1852-3. On said occasion it was my good fortune to con-
template the negro in his highest estate "befoh de wah." His condition of servi-
tude was really enviable. He had all that he wanted and small care. His social
status kept pace with the families to which he was attached. His African ancestry
cut small figure.

In Savannah I met up with Hon. William H. Stiles, who was minister to
Austria under President Pierce. His son, George Stiles, was captain of the
Savannah Volunteer Guards. (Now, this is not a hunting story, but it has to do
with guns, so it is apropos.) The Stiles family occupied one of the sea islands
in Warsaw Sound, near White Bluff, where they raised long staple cotton at 37
cents a pound, and kept blooded stock — horses and cattle — which ran wild during
the war, as the plantation was abandoned at the time. They had also a large
contingent of farm hands and house servants. The musicians of the Volunteer
Guards was made up from the males of this (Green) island contingent.

On one occasion Colonel Stiles invited me down to the plantation, where he
said he thought I would like to hear "a couple of his fifers" play. The band com-
prised some twenty musicians in all, enough for a good-sized drum corps. We
found a neatly white-washed cabin, where the Colonel, while he went in quest of
the fifers, left me with a matronly old colored woman, and a small pickaninny
crawling about the open fireplace, with its mud and stick chimney.

"Now, if you will hold the baby," said the Colonel, when he returned, "'Auntie
will make us an ashcake while the music goes on."

The men put the instruments to their lips, but I did not hear any fife
music, only what seemed at first to be the soft twitter of a singing mouse, appar-
ently coming from behind a dresser. Then there was a mingled sound like the
low warble of canaries; first and second parts began to be audible, with more
rythm and cadence to the notes; finally swelling into fullest volume. Such
harmony, I dare say, has never been produced on instruments of this class. Could
these performers have been shipped to Koster & Bial, in New York, they would
have commanded unprecedented prices and crowded the houses to repletion.

Not long afterwards I began to visit Florida. Some phases of my acquain-
tance with that part of the country appeared in my book, "Camp Life in Florida,''
which was published in 1876. In fact, I have spent one-half of my life-long
winters in the South, taking in all the states from first to last, and .1 may as well
tell your readers what they will never hear from present generations what kind

(34)

IN THE SUNNY SOUTH. 85

of plantation tidbits the negroes liked before' the war. Only the old survivors can
tell yon how a real hoe-cake used to be made. It is sung in the Old Dominion that

"De way to bake a hoe-cake.
Old Virginny nebber tire,
Is to slap it on your foot
And hold it to de fire."

It is simply a mixiture of corn-meal with water and a little grease, made flat
and stood up before the fireplace on the back of a heavy plantation hoe. It was an
invention of old slave times, and is used generally to this day among the lower
classes. Game hunters always carried a couple of hoe cakes in their shooting
jacket side pockets and sat on a fence at noon and ate them with peeled turnips
pulled from the fields. Another favorite relish is corn pone made of meal and
sour rhilk with a little shortening. It used to be made in an old-fashioned Dutch
oven with a handle and cover and baked in the hot coals in the fireplace. When
done an expert cook seizes the pan by its handle, throws it up in the air, gives it
a turn and a flop, and catches it on a platter all ready to serve. Ash cakes are the
same as hoe cakes, except that they are cooked in the ashes between two cabbage
leaves or corn shucks. Boiled corn meal, called dumplings in eastern North
Carolina, flapjacks, Johnny cakes, corn dodgers, boiled corn muffins round, gems
oblong, spoon bread, egg bread, corn mush, boiled cracked hominy, kernels soaked
in lye and shelled corn pounded in wooden pestles constitute the main menu of
the antebellum colony. Sportsmen cannot readily dispense with this table d'hote
at home or in the open field — not even in aristocratic cuisine. Good old Frances,
superlative cook for Major John B. Broadfoot, of Fayetteville, N. C, serves corn
meal to order at any given time. Likewise old Sam Hudson and the Benders, of
Pollokville, up Trent river, will serve an old-fashioned "boiled dinner" in an
inimitable manner which few housekeepers can do at this age. Moreover, it is
quite a trick to garnish a Christmas turkey with the very golden corn which lured
him up to the blind where he lost his life when the hunter shot off his head. There
is a host of sharpshooters and high grade anglers in that Cumberland country —
Pemberton, Holt, Luttcloh, Morgan, Col. Mellett, and fifty others — who fish from
clear water ponds and running streams which are rare down South, and eat plank
shad and shuck oysters at their inimitable club houses by Cape Fear reservoirs
and feeders. Rainbow trout and striped bass are common and heavy in that
marvelous plateau of glaciology.

By the way, speaking of way back reminiscences, I may mention casually that
my large Rand & McNally railroad map, which embraced all the states of the
period, is a net drag to observers who discover that each line of my peregrinations
is marked red with my convenient pencil. It is the same on the Canadian Pacific
early map. Both folders include coastwise and inland routes from ocean to ocean.
I have added new trails each year. An active spider could hardly have spun his
own web with more diligent tracery. Maps of the United States are not made
nowadays as they used to be a half century ago. The scale of miles is different.
One man cannot live all over the Western country at one time any more. A single
sportsman may have suffered disappointment by the scarcity of birds which the '
burning off the dry grass in springtime has destroyed, or midsummer drouth
driven off to more favored places ; yet the whole West should not be condemned
as barren of game. Doubtless game has disappeared by various causes from
localities now populated where it once abounded ; but, nevertheless, it exists in
widespread abundance and in remarkable variety "all over" — if one can procure

36 AX ANGLER' S REMINISCENCES.

permits. The woods, grass, lakes, marshes, sloughs and streams are "full of it."
Having gone through all of the states in my full-fledged maturity with the express
purpose to spy out the land, every facility was afforded by the railroad and steam-
boat companies ; but none of them has won the crown and glory of the grand old
Pennsylvania Central, the great railway artery and vertebral spinebone of the
United States, whose magnate now dwells installed in marble halls magnificent
beyond all comparisons. Finger posts at the main station in the great metropolis
all point southward. When Presidents Scott and Boyd catered to my travels in
the 70's, I shifted from north to south by seasons. At the present date there is a
direct tendency toward the Rio Grande for gun shooters of all sorts. It is a great
range for road runners, chacalaeas and blue quail, to say nothing of jack rabbits
and burros. From El Paso to Matamoras, both sides of the river are blent with
strange characteristics of mixed civilizatrions which have hitherto been little .written
about till now, when F. I. Madero, a well-known resident of the Mexican quarter
in San Antonio (called Santone), Texas, has taken the lead of ambitious followers
after fame. I know the country well! Mestizos sell frijoles (free holders) and
tamales in the plazas, and the whole country is everywhere slashed and creased
with wet weather gullies, arroyos and barrancas. It is a rough region to chase
foxes, rabbits and coyotes, and jump the washouts with bronchos. Even running
hounds will turn somersaults by mistake.

My post-bellum intercourse with the South began in the fall of 1868. Woods
and swamps, which are impenetrable at other seasons, are available then to sports-
men and prospectors. I was fain to renew my acquaintances with survivors of
the war. Shooting birds and animals are preferable to killing recruits. On my
arrival at Savannah I picked up Dr. B. P. Myers, in charge of the hospital, and
started for Green Island with Dave Adams and George and Sam Stiles to run
wild cattle on the deserted plantations for meat and sport. Years afterwards
Myers became post-surgeon at Honolulu, H. I., and now lives in retirement at
Claremont, California. He gets good pastime at Santa Barbara, and further
south, at National City, I have a bungalow of my own. Within a quarter of a
mile I can pick up metals where the army camp stood during our Mexican War
and each soldier pounded his own corn for daily rations. But my reminiscences
do not touch that section where I was or recently arrived. It was a frequent
trip of mine to voyage the Chesapeake and Albermale Canal and Dismal Swamp
on Capt. Tom Southgate's weekly steamboat when the yellow jasmines hung from
the forest limbs which overreached the waterway, and rabbits were seen swim-
ing across with ears set like a sail boat. Aleck Hunter was a favorite companion
of mine for thirty years, and we made our first trip, by permission, to Old Pam-
lico Light, where ducks, swan and geese were plenty around the beaches and the
Sounds, and Roanoke Island was better. Points, and blinds were at hand all
around Manteo and Nag's Head, and when the tide was out swans dabbled on
the fiats out of rifle reach, and when a shot was fired above them, masses would
rise like fleecy clouds above the horizon. Hunter is the most eminent of all
sportsmen who have studied ornithology. He has filled wonderful volumes with
bird) shot, written a relation of four years' service in the Civil War, and put
in valuable service in the United States Land Office. Besides, he has given away
his dress coat and keeps up a lively two-step clog dance at the time of his record.

Aleck Hunter wrote in March, 1908: "I can readily understand your giving
away your dress coat, and eschewing suppers. That kind of pleasure I gave up
when I was fifty years old. It was simply 'Ne vous ne jeu sas le Chandelle.'

IN THE SUNNY SOUTH. 37

I studied years ago how to get all the good out of life without paying its penalty,
and I think you did the same thing — for both of us are phenomenal in health and
vigor. I have been a dutiful son of old Mother Nature, and the ancient lady has
treated me tenderly." He is still diligent in. the U. S. land office at the age of 66.

On one of our trips abroad Capt. Southgate's steamer Newberne, which ran
semi-monthly between Norfolk and Newberne, N. C, via Washington, he intro-
duced us to a venerable supervising inspector of steam vessels named Marshall
Parks, who lived on Freemason street, Norfolk, Va. He must have been eighty
years old then, and he died afterwards at ninety. He told us a story which modern
men of business who stand on their record have never heard — how he and
Cornelius Vanderbilt were partners away back on Albermarle Sound and under-
taking to raise sweet potatoes, called "Harmon" (so named for the original
producer), and ship them to the New York and Baltimore markets when dug.
They owned a freighting vessel and were all ready to sail when a terrible storm
came up and closed in the inlet and shut them out of their tide-water trucking
business. As a shift Cornelius began running a large steam ferry from the New
York battery to Stateu Island, made big money, and not long after went into rail-
roading. Somewhere about 1853 he got into possession of the New York Central
and ordered the nurses and baby wagons out of St. John Park, built up the entire
square with a freight depot and terminal down town, and warned the old knicker-
bockers to move up town. Rutherford Stuyvesant was included. He became a
stockholder of Forest and Stream about twenty years afterwards. So did A.
Augustus Low, the son of the great tea merchant; J. U. Gregory, of Quebec, and
Oliver Optic, of Boston. This is an interesting fact to readers of my reminiscence!^.

Time was in the 70's and 80's up to 1885 when I was a good enough bell-
wether for sportsmen to follow when I gave any of them a cue, and tote them
to a high mountain, like Moses was led aloft to survey the surrounding forest.
There is no such a delectable elevation as Mt. Pisgah, which stands on George
Vanderbilt's demesne among the Appalachians.

CHAPTER VI.

A SOJOURX IX FLORIDA.

Mem., an index, tab or tally, serves as an excellent purpose if one under-
takes to retrieve bygone years. Forty years ago seems short to me. One day
carries me back instinctively to the time when I went gipsying. Although repeat-
edly interrupted by spasms of business activity and speculative ventures, my
pursuits were reciprocally subordinated to each other. An active temperament tires
a man of the monotony of a permanent tenable home. Well-to-do people are
apt to travel. Consequently, when my only son of thirteen years was called by
death on February 22, in 1869, I closed my residence in Brooklyn, N. Y., and
skipped with my wife to a warmer climate, where nature smiles when mourners
weep. Thence forward for the five years previous to my starting my "Forest and
Stream" we were always moving about states, provinces and territories, and from
one Indian reservation to another, and I would always locate her at available
stopping places while I went prospecting.

In those fallow days, when sportsmanship was not a fine art, and the latest
style of a shooting jacket alone gave a man the entry into exclusive clubs, we
inevitably carried guns for protection, provender and pastime, depending upon them
to keep the camp larder supplied. Hunting for the pot was entirely legitimate
and an incident of the outing. Deer meat, squirrels, ducks and quail or any other
game all went into the same stew at each meal. That was old moose hunter
Warner A. Wilder's practice and mine in Muskoka or any other part of Canada.

In the spring of 1870 I put in most of my time with Dr. Chas. J. Kenworthy,
of Jacksonville, Fla., on the cruise of his catboat "Spray" from Cedar Keys to
Punta Rassa, and later at the Indian river with Fred A. Ober. On the west gulf
cormorants lined up like regiments of soldiers on the shores of the wooded isles
at Cedar Keyes, and red cedar pencils were plenty. At Homosassa we found
Greene Smith and wife, of Albany Journal, keeping a boarding house for sports
who caught 25 pounds of redfish in the river, interviewed a great alligator sunning
on the river side, alert to slip into the water down his slide hke an otter when
alarmed. He was said to be seventeen feet in length. Grape fruit, the largest
grown, on trees as great as were ever seen, were wonders on premises once
occupied by Senator Yulee, before the Civil War, during which period .he became
Secretary of the Confederate Navy.

A tidy excursion steamer one day took us down to Jones' on Sarasota Bay.
Coral reefs, channels and nigger heads were traversed all the way when the wind
and weather were fair. When it stormed bird fliers were smashed against the
glass of Egmont lighthouse by the dozen, and the keeper put in his spare time in
taxidermy to set 'em up again. On the way to Tampa we met old John Gomez
hauling his boat up the beach. He was a lively old skipper of 87 years of age,
who lived until July 23, 1902. He was born in 1791. His age is verified by the
church registry at St. Augustine. He died at Tarpon Springs, Fla. He used to
take sea anglers out fishing for big fish.

On the way to Cedar Keys we stopped off at Gainesville and slipped into
Gulf Hamik, where cattle run wild, and found a party of sportsmen which had

(88)

A SOJOURN IN FLORIDA. 39

been attacked by a herd of them. A big bull ran one of the boys up a twenty-foot
"palmetto," took the limber trunk between his horns, wagged his head, and tried
to shake him out of the tree. His comrades, who heard his call for help, arrived
jus-t in time to scare the animal off. This immense wilderness runs parallel with
the coast some sixty miles. The southern point is not far from Ocala, and a
horseman used to carry a mail bag there from Homosassa. Matters are different
now. There are more people in the vicinity and fewer ferocious cattle.

On my way east I took an excursion up the St. Johns river, called at Harriet
Beecher's up stream, took a bath at Green Cove Spring, stopped off at Palatka,
where the Vermont Chas. F. Orvis' brother kept a winter resort, caught bass
opposite the house, ate oranges and bananas at Hart's orchard and plantation,
heard a six-foot diamond rattlesnake sing at Mrs. Blonson's. I called at Will
Fuller's beautiful place, located on a shell mound just above hers. His wealthy
father and uncle were brewers of Brooklyn, N. Y., and James was the Master
Mason of Commonwealth Lodge in 1837, when I was "made." He was one of
the first orange growers from his section.

It was a delightful ride tip river to Enterprise, Sanford and Lake Worth,
passing between the patches of lettuce, blue hyacinths, green arrow-heads project-
ing from the water spaces frequented by snakes and alligators, so dense that the
steamer could hardly push through them. At the Enterprise Hotel, on the lake
side opposite Sanford, we had a six-foot alligator tied to a stake by a stout six-foot
rope and set a big dog on it. The beast would hiss like a fighting cat, and when
he swung his tail at the dog to floor him the snap of the rope threw him with a
somersault. We did not like to have the scaly prisoner teased, but people would
like to see the amusement.

I devoted the following summer to assisting President Fayette S. Giles and
Lafayette Westbrook, state representative, to set up the notable Blooming Grove
Park, securing Ezra Cornell, David Dudley Field, J. K. Morehead and others for
directors of this superlative preserve in Pike county, Pennsylvania. Ira Tripp, of
Scranton, gave us a pet black bear which future lady members fed with cake, ice
cream and watermelon. Big Joe grew to eight feet tall when he stood on his hind
feet at four years of age. One sunny day in midwinter, when the snow melted on
the "knobs" and he thought spring had come, he slipped his collar in this hillside
den, went up to the club house to see the place, and the temporary care-taker poked
his rifle through the blinds and killed him on the veranda. To mention the
historical incidents of its forty years' lifetime and name its notable club members,
would fill a readable volume of interest, such as the versatile and veritable
Fred. E. Pond — of "Turf, Field and Farm" — furnished to the public twenty odd
years ago. There is much to his record as well as to inine.

As the winter months passed on to spring, I turned to East Florida and crossed
over from Tocoi to St. Augustine on Judge Wilmot's improvised wooden railroad.-
He was an enterprising man of the highest sort. He was able to give the moving
public comfortably quick transit just after the Civil War ended, when the South
was so miserable that no one had a dollar or credit after the long struggle. Its
entire rolling stock was essentially home-made. I penciled oflf a sketch of it at
the time.

The tracks had no iron straps and the road no bed. There were neither
freight nor passenger cars per se, taxonomically speaking, but the carriages were a
droll combination of the flatcar and the old-fashioned Concord coach, each one
seating twice three persons, vis-a-vis, inside. Baggage and freight, if there happened

40

AX ANGLERS REMINISCENCES.

to be any, were both carried outside on either extremity of the projecting platform,
and if inside space were by chance overcrowded, the trunks and boxes afforded
convenient sittings for tourists who were fond of forest scenery and a quiet smoke
in the open air. In that respect the improvised vehicles resembled the modern
observation cars, though outriders were wholly unprotected from sun or rain.
It usually occupied three hours to make the run of fifteen miles across the neck
from the St. Johns river to the ocean. When special dispatch was demanded an
old white horse was substituted to run as express. He would make the transit in
two hours and a half. Of course, the train went light at such times. The
Tocoi railroad was the first railroad in Florida. It existed before the war.
Without such a railroad St. Augustine was practically isolated. The land between
it and the river was virtually a swamp, in many places without a bottom, and a
tramway was much cheaper and more easily constructed than a wagon road of dirt.
No vestige of the old plant remains.

, I

mm ■

^«

r (

^'^^fJW^^':

V

EARLY R.\ILROAD TIJAFN IN FLORIDA.

The next fall I found the persistent canoe man, N. H. Bishop, on the Indian
river with Fred A. Ober. Both were naturalists. One was especially in quest of
fancy feather birds of all colors along the shore and among the swamps and
timber, and up the Oclawaha, including snake birds (plotar anhinge), with a neck
longer than its body, which could swim better than they could fly. When a small
excursion steamer carried tourists up stream at night with a lire power on the
bow to help shove the boat around the bends, lots of native birds would be
scared oflf their roosts from the overhanging branches when the flashlight passed
underneath "chugging." It was an exciting scatteration. Ober had a wiry working
partner with him named Jim Russell, who was a keen alligator hunter for their
hides. One time he dove to the bottom of a lagoon and knifed one which had
sounded. The trio were exploring the everglades, and about this time shoved
their houseboat four miles up the Kissimee-choked morass waist deep, with
alligators and snakes all around them, to say nothing of swarming mosquitoes,
red bugs and tormenting insects innumerable. His object was to find the
Okechobee once more after the Seminole War closed in 1838. He was the first

A SOJOURN IN FLORIDA. 41

white explorer who had penetrated since, and the whole covert was virtually an
incognito, except to veterans like my venerable friend, Major Hamilton Merrill,
who followed on to my "Forest and Stream" office in 1873. He died about 86
years of age and his surviving son is getting old fast, too. He was prominent at
Albany, N. Y., for years. His father chipped in with the rest of us to complete
our "Camplife in Florida" in 1876, and old man Samuel Clarke, of Newton, Mass. ;
Wm. H. Gregg, of St. Louis, and C. J. Kenworthy, of Jacksonville, filled in the
correct ornithology for the composite book and told us where to catch the best
fish. Old man Gregg must be 80 now all right, but he still sails his "Odion," and
has invited Barton Evermann, myself and Tarleton Bean to beat the November
gales to Key West every year the past few winters. Meanwhile his son-in-law
is president of the Canadian Pacific railroad to the Rupert terminus.

I might have much to say of Fred. A. Ober ("Fred. Beverly"). No worker and
producer is more worthy of honor and eminence. But he is not in quest of a niche
or pedestal, or to be hung in a gallery.

Mr. Ober may be said to have made his debut through "Forest and Stream,"
which became his earnest patron and promoter at the outset of his career; and
its quondam editor, who writes these lines, delights to do him hoftor in his own
peculiar, rough bon hommie.

In 1876 Mr. Ober had charge of the "Hunter's Camp" at the Centennial Expo-
sition in Philadelphia, a most attractive exhibit in Lansdowne Ravine, where he
figured conspicuously as a veritable Leather-Stocking in backwoods costume, his
swarthy locks aiding very materially to embellish the character which was not all
assumed.

After the West Indies and South America, — as far as the mouth of the
Orinoco, — came the several extensive tours of Mexico, beginning in 1881. lii
the course of one of his cross-country trips, in 1883, he traveled 10,300 Mexican
miles, and climbed to the summit of the Popocatapetl, 17,800 feet upward. When
Ober cannot delve he will soar !

CHAPTER VII.

THE WILD WEST.

Ro-\MiNG at large among the states and territories during the TO's the shifting
seasons were followed year after year without any special purpose on my part,
winning or losing, accepting nature's gifts and taking chances wherever I pitched a
camp or drove a stake, north or south, or elsewhere. Yet among the wild Indians
in our reservations there was risk when buffaloes were running, and really trouble
moreover was at hand. Army posts were distributed all over the prairies, and I
frequently dropped in to report when a storm threatened. I stopped in at Fort
Custer ten weeks one year with Senior Captain Sanderson, 11th Infantry, by
invitation, with my wife along. But that was in 1881, after the war was fought,
and all over redskins were subdued and made captives. Meanwhile I cut across
country.

Whatever bappened at large is but an echo and an imitation of history, which
extended from 1804 to about 1860 under the reign of the explorers, Lewis and
Clarke.

You see the breech clout Indian vanished as soon as the freighters and
traders enabled them to be called blanket Indians. After the buffalo slaughter
was ordered in 1875 they adopted felt hats. I saw lots of old felt hats in the
Sioux camp at Little Big Horn, where the departing warriors, after the Custer
massacre, left their lodge poles standing and empty kettles on the ground. I was
at Chetopah, on the Kansas line of Indian territory, when some of the buffalo
hunters fitted out with splendid mounts and a grand flourish to deplete the redskins'
larder by government edict, and I was on the Yellowstone in 1881, following the
winter when the last wholesale slaughter of the buffalo and antelope took place in
the deep snow along the bottom. Tihe string of carcasses as I saw them (all the
antelopes and most of the old buffaloes remaining "unpeeled") was at least one
hundred miles long, sometimes in clusters just as they were shot in their tracks,
with intervals of mesa between, and again in single file or by twos and threes, for
rods together. It was a gruesome sight, for the wolves had exposed the bones of
all whose skins had been taken by eating off the meat. There were no hungry
wolves that year. Not a howl was heard.

The year previous, in 1874, Congressman Fort, of Illinois, had introduced a
bill to protect the buffaloes, but those whose business was to fight the Indians had
already decided that the least dangerous, least expensive and most expeditious
method was to destroy their rations and wipe out their subsistence. Knowing the
game that was on the Indians fought desperately at the Little Big Horn, and all
along the navigable rivers in Montana the steamboat men had to ironclad their
pilot houses to protect their river men from marauders on the cliff. The sagacious
Crows were then quite willing to cede the right of way to the Northern Pacific
railroad in 1881, whereby they might receive food to supply the lack of buffalo meat.

Referring to- the action and display of buffalo and antelope afield on the
Arkansas in the 70's, Dr. A. J. Woodcock writes poetically :

(42)

DR. A. J. WOODCOCK.

THE WILD WEST. 48

"Yes. far back from the river, in places the buffalo grass stood one foot in
height, while the luxuriant growth of grass in the river bottoms at times in places
almost hid the Arkansas from view; in almost every plains visited the prairie
runners, as the Indians called the antelope, added life, the very poetry of all
motion to the view; the lesser prairie folk that flj-^, run and crawl were most
abundant and seemed to think that the beautiful prairie lands bordering the river
were made for them, while the scattered groves of cottonwood trees assured the
prairie traveler of abundance of wood for his campfire, and that everywhere in
tliose reaches of the river that were bare of trees, ready to hand, was the 'bois
de vache,' the buffalo chip — it was borne in upon one that the materials of a good
camp, wood, water and grass, as stated above, were ready to hand, which with the
plethora of game and the dryness of these sandy meadows bordering the Arkansas,
especially when the prairie lands were a dreary wilderness of mud, of a verity
made them seem to the old plains wanderers what in fact they were * * *
most hospitable.

"Yours to the end of the trail,

"Dr. a. J. Woodcock."

The doctor calls special consideration to the fine writings of the late notable
sportsmen, Col. Geo. D. Alexander and Wm. C. Kennerly, who wrote for the
outdoor press and nature over the name of "Old Dominion," where the latter
harked the wide-awake foxhounds most around Fairfax section. He says : "I
have both of them in my studio in pen and photo, afoot and mounted, and many
an English lord and earl, the Atlantic sea across." His brilliant pen never rests
while in action. And he quotes from Kennerly in this way: "I have been touched
by Dr. Woodcock's personal allusion to myself because, presumptuously, I thought
that I could distinguish some similitude between Colonel George D. Alexander and
myself. We are about the same age — eighty-three or eighty-four years old — both
have been Confederate soldiers, both devoted sportsmen, and better than all, both
chock full of good, rich, red Scotch blood, and the same with regard to our
friend. Colonel Gordon ('Pious Jeems'), of Mississippi, for I believe that we
are all three nearly allied blood kin." Gen. Wade Hampton is included among his
comrades, and I have been his associate repeatedly at Sapphire, Toxaway, in
Transylvania, N. C., of recent years. I think he died some five years ago in his
eightieth year at Highlands, S. C.

The October issue of Field and Stream, for 1908, has an article of mine which
starts with a duck hunt in Wake county, North Carolina, and ends with the
capture of a noted "moonshiner." The incidents are quite different from ordinarj'.
And this puts me in mind of a seven-weeks' scout I had with Major Jacob
Wagner, U. S. A., in 1878, among the mountain ranges of Matanga and Asihe, in
North Carolina, Johnson county, Tennessee, and Scott, in Virginia. We pulled a
lot of illicit stills during the outing, and when I drew out of the scrimmage I left
the field for Aberdeen Courthouse, Va., in company with Marshal Kyle (who was
afterwards killed), each riding double with a culprit up behind. To say that I
felt out of place is a sore confession, for my sympathies were with the men who
could not earn a dollar (each) in any other way while they dwelt in the mountains.
where ingress and egress in those days was not possible except by a half-barred
sled hauled over a trail. Even the streams afforded us exit. We could wade out
that way. Anderson, son of C. Bird Jenkins (seabird), showed us where the best
trout fishing was, and took us straigiht to his still and treated us to corn whisky.
It broke my heart to be caught in company with the revenue officers and at once
be suspected as a decoy by the man they snapped. It was a surprise party to me,
and I quit the business at the first leave.

44 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

That same year I had an upset at Pig's Eye Bar, just below St. Paul, to pay
for it. My friend, D. C. Estes, a naturalist, started in his own sailboat for a
voyage down the river to Lake City, camping out and shooting July woodcock by
the way. Our outfit was complete in every particular, and a grand time was antici-
pated, but disappointment soon came, for when about one mile below town a flaw
of wind jumped the high cliff and struck the sail, and the boat at once went over
in mid river and in deep water. Numerous bundles, carpet-bags, guns, rods,
blankets, tents, in fact everything, was either set afloat or sent to the bottom.
Being a good swimmer, I set out boldly in boots and corduroys for land,
while the doctor, to save the boat from going down stream and himself
from going to the bottom, stuck to the craft, and setting himself astride of the
capsized boat, succeeded, after about one hour's hard paddling, in reaching the
shore. The boat, as soon as possible, was righted and bailed out, and gave chase
to the floating bundles and valises, but before they could be reached all had sunk
but one of little consequence. Two valuable gims, a great quantity of tackle of
every description, composing the outfit; all the clothing, money and other valu-
ables were lost. Fifteen hundred dollars would hardly cover the loss.

I recall my numerous friends among the shooting clubs at Price Lake and
round about: Timberlake, Seabury, Zimmerman, E. F. Warner, R. W. Mathews,
Geo. R. Finch.

At the traps I xised to average three to five birds out of ten, but my comrades
expected better things.

The best field work I ever did was among the July woodcock in the cornbrake
of Bay City, Mich. A companion sportsman and I walked down parallel rows,
one shooting to the -right and the other to the left, so as not to hit each other.
The dog took the center to flush the birds. We bagged a dozen fine ones and
took them to the hotel. The cook burned them to a crisp. Blackbirds used to
flock by millions in North Dakota during the grain harvest. They would rise in a
cloud so dense as to obscure the sun. I fired two barrels into the mass and
dropped fifty^seven killed and wounded. Geese in the fields were better game.
Coming home at dark after a successful hunt in the Gereaux Slough back of
Pembina in September I shot at a blue wing teal over my head and dropped him.
As he fell a barred owl dove for him at the flashlight out of the dark and I
got him with my second barrel.

Once on the Yellowstone, near Pryor's Creek, I climbed the top of a bluff,
and peering over the edge of the bank rested my gun on the sod where a bevy
of sage hens were going through a minuet, and dropped seven, one after another,
until I had killed the most of them. The fool hens couldn't guess what struck
them, and the noise of the gun did not scare them. Talk about pot-hunting, I was
right in it. I strapped the heads into the bights of as many leather whangs which
were tied to my saddle and started down to the bottom among the plums and
cottonwoods. Lieutenant Fuller, a soldier from Fort Custer, took one side of the
timber belt and I the other, looking for bush deer. Returning I ran up against a
big grizzly which had ridden down a plum tree between his legs and was busy
pulling the plums off a branch by the armsfull. He had the stem of the tree under
him between his hind legs and the branches close to his face. He looked at me
for an instant, and regardless continued his repast. I concluded not to meddle
with him and rode out of the timber. When I reached the mesa I found just one
chicken head in its loop. In my interview with Ephraim I forgot about the dead
birds at my saddle bow.

THE WILD WEST. 46

I have knocked about the state of Kansas a good deal during the 70' s — among
the sunflowers, grasshoppers and tumble weeds. Old John Swainson, of St. Paul,
and I had' to carry a box of ice with us when hunting prairie chickens one hot
September to put on the top of his red setter's head to keep him sane. The
simoon wind was so burning that we had to get behind a wheat stack to keep
from being fanned. The same old dog was caught up by a straight tornado at the
town of Hallock, Minn., in 1880, which jerked and whirled him over and over an
eighth of a mile over the prairie while fast to his kennel. When rescued after the
blow was over, he ran under our bed and staid there for twenty-four hours,
trembling. As to Kansas, our famous bird shooter, A. C. Waddell, writes me a
recent letter from New Jersey, which happens to chip in a most interesting opinion
on that section, which I append right here. He says:

"I spent almost twenty years in Kansas and Kansas City, Mo. What a life of
pleasure interspersed with trouble I, had. Dr. Nicholas Rowe, of the American
Field, remarked to a gentleman in San Francisco once: 'That man (meaning me)
would have been a very wealthy man had he used the same energy in mercantile
business as he has in sportsmanship, but he loved the occupation of the sportsman
with his dogs afield and he has devoted all his life to hunting and fishing.' I do
not regret it. I am 75 years old May 25 coming — hair black, and they say as well
preserved as any man they ever knew. I owe it all to outdoor exercise and in the
saddle. I am now cooped up for want of opportunity to be in a game country. I
want to be in the field. , I saw Charles H. Raymond not- long since — fat and content
with wealth. He bought dogs and gave large prices.

"The pioneers of sportsmanship are the ones who had the real sport. What
a field Kansas presented to tlxose who traveled over the old Santa Fe trail during
the years from 1868 to 1876 — great prairies over which the deep ruts made by the
prairie schooners years before appeared — covered with grass, with here and
there wild sunflowers and the endless variety of prairie flowers. To be in such a
field with dog and gun and to see the rise of the prairie chickens as, they sailed
away before you — what a life to live and what a life to think back over.

"I have no fault to find and I thank my God that he so directed my course
of fife th3,t it led me to pleasant places. I have been to and over all the Kansas
rivers and creeks. Most every farmer in Kansas knew me. I camped on their
farms and w:as ever welcome, for I returned favors. From Kansas I weiit to
California, lived' there six years, was familiar with all sections of the state. After
that, in 1896, I moved to Mississippi and remained there five years, all this time
accompanied by the finest lot of setters and pointers the North could produce.
Six years ago I returned to my birthplace — by invitation — to live out the few
remaining years thctt I may have, and it is pleasant, very pleasant, to be in com-
munication with Chas. Hallock. . . •> .

. /^'Your friei'id ever.:.- • .

"A. C Waddei^l."

CHAPTER MIL

LITERARY WORK AND TRAVEL.

When the great moral uplift in out-of-door recreation began to be felt, some
forty years ago, the title selected for its mouthpiece by its accredited leader, Arnold
Burges, was "The American Sportsman." But this did not fully express the
peculiar character of pastime which nature affords in her simplicity and attractive-
ness. So "Forest and Stream" was substituted as a catch word, and all the
gunners and anglers said "Amen !" I took the lead of its 600 subscribers and was
in personal touch and step with them. All celebrities, army officers, explorers,
scientists, Indian missionaries, plainsmen, mounted police, seafarers and wayfarers,
Canadians and neighbors from across the international line, a famous galaxy —
no man can remember his acquaintances — but whose brightness may now be
made to reappear in remembrance, and they followed to learn the way to choice
shooting grounds, where I had beaten the bush in years before. Chas. Reynolds,
just from college, prepared the guide which I had compiled.

They were good worthies whose acquaintances I had made while I worked up
my "Fishing Tourist" in 1873. I then had twenty-five years of travel with rod
and gun to my credit. Governor Horatio Seymour, of New York, headed that list
and put up fifteen dollars as a three-years' subscription. He banked on its long
life, and it has lived thirty-eight years. Geo. Bird Grinnell, who accepted "Forest
and Stream" from my hands as chief when I dropped its management, has been
a wonderful sportsman ever since among the Blackfeet and herds and heads of
Wyoming. Previous to that he was with the government explorer, F. C. Hayden,
in 1874. He stocked up on natural history and wild Indians then, and has published
valuable books innumerable.

I had devoted the summers of 1870-3 to canvassing members for Blooming
Grove Park Association, with headquarters at No. Ill Fulton street. New York,
picking whortleberries, putting up a club house on Lake Giles, and roping deer
which swam across the water to elude the chase of the hounds, so as to put them
in our wire paddock as a game preserve. Our warden, Ed Quick, was not slow to
keep them from poachers, and Capt. Cassell, of Baltimore Druid Park, and Col.
Clark, of Tennessee, gave us many — 200 head — from their surplus.

In 1870 Charles Dickens touched my elbow at Westminster Hotel, in Irving
Place, while in company with Fayette S. Giles, nineteen years before he wrote up
his American Notes on the Red River in Louisiana. In 1858 I met ex-Senator
Henry M. Rice, of Minnesota, when he was one of three Indian Commissioners.
He was on his way up to Leech lake and had to stop over night with his friend
at the old log hostelry of Mrs. McCarty, on the edge of Wisconsin. She charged
fifty cents each meal and 50 cents for a lodging. The transients asked "for baked
potatoes and boiled eggs, or something you don't handle with your hands." It waf
early dark morning, and the room was lighted with an only candle. She carried
an axe in her hand as she was passing from the woodpile to replenish the fire, and
she replied : "Ate yer breakfast, or I'll give ye the contents of this axe." And she
was reported as having killed a female helper in the same way. In 1871, on my
return from the great lakes of the West, I was given a seat next to Lord Dufferin,

(46)

COL. A. EGBERT.
Contributor to "Forest and Stream."

MR. W. M. TILESTOX,
Associate Editor.

MR. ED H. HOPE,
Well-known Dog Trainer.

MR. A. X. CHENEY,
Popular Writer on Angling.

FRIENDS OF CHARLES HALLOCK.

LITERARY WORK AND TRAVEL.

47

the author of "High Latitudes," at Fred Cumberland's banquet at the Rossin
House in Toronto. Then Dr. James H. Richardson, who was present, prepared for
myself and wife a special trip to the Upper Ottawa country for a few days' fishing
in the mountain lakes about Des Joachim, and I have his letter before me. dated
Toronto, July 12, 1875. You see, readers, that my portfolio and pigeon holes are
crammed with uncalendared tales to print. With changing seasons I was wont to
change my trips from state to state and latitude to longitude. All this time my
staff was serving as recording angels — William C. Harris, Barnett Philips, Wm. M.
Tileston, G. M. Taylor and Horace Smith, besides Reynolds and Grinnell.
Poor Tileston was kilkd by a wall falling on him and young Webb, while the
Westminster dog show was going on. It was a sad accident. My office desk kept
me fully eight months. Four months chiefly engaged me annually at the Soaith.

MR. FAYETTE S. GILES,
Secretary Blooming Grove Park Association.

MR. H. H. THOMPSON,
Angler and Angling Writer.

I went to Menchan, Rigolet and Ponchartrain with C. G. Ballejo, the best of
southern bass anglers. At Port Aransas. Texas, which swarms with ponies,
ducks and tarpon, my business man, Wm. C. Harris, used to take Perie with him
to paint fish he caught for his forthcoming illuminated "fish book." He died some
four years ago at 74. The sporting ground was quiet when I dragged a trailing
spoon or squid; but nowadays, when the government has taken hold on the
premises for special uses, the boats which start for the fishing ground string out
in a dozen trailers, as they have done for half a century at Alexandria Bay, where
I caught my heavy muscalonge among the St. Lawrence Islands while housed at
Grossman House. There are even better fish around the North Carolina sounds
and inlets — much better house boats congregate. While our friend, Washington
A. Coster, hunts for deer and prods hibernated alligators out of their mud holes in
quest of salmon, I resort to the cold streams of my long life friends, W. H. Wood-
ward, of Birmingham. Ala. ; Ivers W. Adams, of Boston, and the late lamented
General Surgeon Baxter, of the U. S. Army, whose mansion on the Restigouche

48 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

was an attractive resort for special guests, where high-grade fish portraits were
painted wonderfully and true to life by his dexterous wife. I had hoped to have
his Indian birch canoe and his appearance in dress uniform be shown in this self-
chapter; but it will doubtless come in a future de luxe volume. His summer house
was burned fifteen years ago, and now the entire Campbellton population of 2,000
was burned last year, bodily and totally.

In 1874-5 there went forth an edict from the government, sub rosa, to cut off
subsistence of the plains Indians by slaughtering buffaloes, elk and antelope. In
consequence the wolves starved as well as the redskins, but of late years they
have fared much better, where they can fatten on the homesteads of the spreading
settlers.

Once, away back, when Fred E. Pond was hunting prairie chickens in Wis-
consin, he held up a train for five minutes, on which I was traveling, and obtained
a momentary interview with me. Then he waved a signal and the train moved on.
He was just of age, and good stuff.

In Canada the French (habitans) and half-breed guides and voyageures were
very tractable and serviceable, and drank whisky "only when I did" by agreement.
But let the redskins appear in a later chapter. I will introduce a lot of them
whom I met. I have a list of a hundred or more; and also a list of my army
comrades, who ranged the plains over and wrote up essays for "Forest and
Stream." I missed few frontier posts from boundary to boundary, north to south,
Maine to Texas, and Pembina to Caddo in the Nation. I spent ten weeks with my
wife at Fort Custer, in Montana, with Senior Capt. G. K. Sanderson, of the 11th
Infantry, and Capt. Hamilton, of the Cavalry. We went out shooting and trout
fishing in Big and Little Horn, Lodger's creek. Black canyon and up the
Yellow^stone. Trout fishing and grayling everywhere. Old man Finkley. on
Prior's creek, showed us the best fishing places. That was in 1881, not so very long
after General Custer's soldiers were wiped out by the Sioux (in 1876), and our
river boat pilot houses were sheathed with iron plates to keep off bullets from the
overlooking plateau, where Indians would ambush and shoot at us as we passed.
We had some good shooting of our own — at geese — on the mud flats in midstream
as our stern-wheel burrow chugged up the quick water. That same year I stopped
with Major E. B. Kirk at Bismarck for a day, when they brought in Sitting Bull
as a prisoner from Fort Yates below. At Terry's Landing, on the Big Horn,
there was a covered way from the cantonment to the river side, where the soldiers
went for water, to keep from being shot by the Sioux, who were still on the
warpath. I put up with Lieutenant Wheeler. The same year General Phil
Sheridan was in the Rockies with the dukes hunting grizzlies, when G. O.
Shields (magazine writer) joined the outfit at Ft. Custer and afterwards published
a volume of the battle and exploits, with photos of pelts and trophies won.
Captain Partello wrote up many hunting stories for the "American Field," and so
did Lieutenant Schwatka. Such men are worth mentioning.

In course of time I worked my way eastward as far as Fargo, N. Dak.,
about October 1, and found Editor Hull, of the "Republican," whom I had known
at Presque Isle, Maine, in 1859, where he was editor of the "Pioneer." Here
is what he printed about my western trip. Every resident was interested ; it was
a critical time:

: "He says that the buffaloes are running between the Missouri and the
Yellowstone. He saw the first buffalo about fifteen miles east of Fort Custer, and
while standing in the door of the stage ranch was fortunate enough to shoot one.
The. herd commenced moving southward about the middle of August, and two

LITERARY WORK AND TRAVEL. 49

were killed on the 15th of August within fifteen miles of Glendive. They are most
numerous between the Dry Fork of the Missouri and the Yellowstone, at a point
about thirty miles west of Keogh. The Crows, Cheyennes, and many white
hunters are in full pursuit, killing and skinning these animals at the rate of 150 a
day. The herd is now crossing the Yellowstone into the Crow reservation ; it may
be for the last time, provided the Northern Pacific railroad gets through there
before another year rolls around. Mr. Hallock says that there are about ten
hunters, red and white, to one buffalo, and the race of the American bison is
almost run.

Several parties of gentlemen have been, and some of them still are, hunting
in the Big Horn mountains, all of them without exception fitted out at Fort Custer.
A. M. Jameson, an Irish gentleman from Dublin, has been in the mountains for
five weeks, and in that time has killed twenty-nine grizzly bears. Count Andrassy,
a lieutenant in the Austrian service and a grandson of Count Andrassy, the states-
man, with a party of five other gentlemen, have also had good success in capturing
grizzlies, as well as numerous deer and other game.

Jas. Lillidale, Esq., and wife, and Otho Shaw, brother of Vero Shaw, the
well-known dog fancier, and author of several treatises on the canine race, are
now in the mountains. Their sport, however, was temporarily interrupted by a
stampede of the pack mules, every one of which ran back to Custer and had to be
recovered before they could pursue their sport.

G. O. Shields, Esq., correspondent of the "American Field," of Chicago, and
Mr. Huffman, the photographer of Miles City, with an outfit, had just returned
from a trip to the mountains when Mr. Hallock left Custer, after seventeen days'
absence, during which they had captured a good many photographs, some grizzlies
and other game.

Mr. Hallock himself has traveled five hundred and fifty miles by wagon and
saddle, engaged in several hunting expeditions, outfitted at Custer, where he was a
guest, and among other experiences was present at the council at the Crow agency
for the purpose of securing the right of way through the Crow reservation for the
N. P. R. R. He has carefully looked the country over with especial reference to
the interests of the N. P. R. R. Co., reaching the extreme western end of the
western survey, and will write a series of letters for the New York "Herald,'"
which we feel sure may be depended upon as an accurate and interesting account
of the country, its attractions and resources. Mr. Hallock took the first train in
from the end of the track at O'Fallon's creek, Mrs. Hallock being the first lacfy
passenger on the new extension.

Mr. Hallock says that from Fort Custer, north to Stillwater, a distance of
about one hundred miles, there are many settlers, and on some portions of the
bottom, where there is plenty of wood and water, one is hardly out of sight of
fences for twenty miles on a stretch."

In 1882 I was up Regina, Sascatchewan territory, near the terminus of the
new Canadian Pacific R. R., and a string of Red river carts brought in sacks of
pemmican for sale. That was the very last buffalo meat ever made into pemmican
south of the Peace river.

Some considerable time afterwards, I think it was in 1885, I got an order
from VVm. T. Hornaday (then of the Smithsonian) to put him on some fine
game. But all we could find was half a dozen dingy old bulls in Montana dusting
themselves on the top of a mound. They were tearing their hair from grief.

To hark back quite a bit. After the rifle match was won at Creedmoor, Brook-
lyn, N. Y., between the Irish and Americans, with Major Arthur B. Leach and

60 AN ANGLERS RKMINISCF.XCKS.

General Geo. W. Wingate in their respective command of elevens, I took live of
the Irish team down to the Nation (Indian Territory then, but now Oklahoma, and
the rest of the world), and picked up a good manager, George H. Dorman, at
Hannibal, on the Missouri, and a couple of good guides at Chetopah, on the
Kansas line, and started for Cabin creek with Capt. Case and Bill Orme after deer.
We had been sidetracked from the "M. K. and T." at Shell City. Mo., after quail
and sage hens and others. We stopped over with Mr. O. Duck, but market gunners
were not after him. John Rigby, the Dublin gun maker, and Joe Milner, the home
stretcher at the 1,000-yard target, are now the only survivors of that party of
thirteen, at 75 and 80 years of age. While we waited two days at Chetopah a
painted gang of Cherokees rode into town and shot up the saloons at the railway
station, and made all passengers in the waiting room kneel down and say their
prayers. My riflemen from old Ireland galloped down from the town and ran
them off quick. While we were hunting deer among the swales of the rolling
prairie a big buck was hit, which ran two miles at least before he fell, and
although the hunters followed him on horseback, the buzzards had his eyes and
entrails out before they could reach him. They actually began to tear him while
he was yet alive. The carcass was black with the birds when the hunters came up ;
and the air was filled with hundred's, and more constantly arriving from all direc-
tions, although up to the moment of the fatal shot two or three only could be seen
aloft lazily quartering the sky. Perhaps the most mysterious feature of the whole
occurrence was that the birds should detect the predicament of the deer the
instant he was fatally wounded, and so follow him to the death ; and not only the
two or three birds of the vicinity, but the hundreds farther off and remote, who
must have either observed the deer from their distant points of view, or else noted
the unusual stir and direction of flight of their fellow buzzards. In either case,
the evidence is specially conclusive that they were keenly on the alert, and that
nothing within their scope of vision, however trifling, escaped their notice.

By this time the frontier army posts and forts were beginning to fill up with
Indian captives, and down at Fort Sill Interpreter Jones gave me a large number
of Comanche photos, which I sold to the U. S. Government — since 190O — for James
Mooney to use in writing up the wild Indians as they were. I have a couple of
large Prang's lithographs in glass and gilt frames in the ethnological gallery of our
new U. S. Museum, which shows two old trappers of the plains on horseback
covering their packs of furs from being captured by ten mounted Indians who
try to stampede their horses by shaking blankets, yelling and letting arrows fly.
They had no guns in those days and the trappers stood them off with their rifles.
In 1877 Capt. R. R. Pratt and Interpreter G. F. Fox had Crazy Horse and his
family and some seventy Southwest Apaches and Comanches at Ft. Marion, St.
Augustine, in uniform. The smallest Indian, at the tail of the line, was named
"Matches," and he was a smart, cheerful match for any of them. He gave a little
by-play in the plaza and could shoot arrows and keep six in the air at once by
quick dexterity. My venturing among the wild redskins in the reservations was
a hazard in the seventies. But I could enjoy the association of Micmacs, Malicetes
and Mohawks at random in Canada, who furnished good voyageurs and bois du
coureurs for salmon fishers and moose hunters. While sitting in my office in
New York my first year Dr. W. F. Carver dropped in fresh from Dakota, where
he was born, and shot an Indian arrow into my ceiling overhead to show me how-
he could shoot a buffalo through the heart on a run. Soon after he and A. Hi
Bogardus had some by-play before the public, shooting glass balls, and Buffalo
Bill put up his first big show at Evastina, Staten Island. Those were great events.

DR. W. F. CARVER.

LITERARY WORK AND TRAVEL. 51

A little before that I was up at St. Regis lake, in the Adirondacks, with H.
Polhemus, of Brooklyn, to see him stake out a sportsmen's hotel for Apollo Smith,
who is alive yet and frisky at 80 odd. That time I met Mrs. W. H. H. Murray, with
"Adirondack Murray." They had a camp of their own at Raquette lake. She
talked me down for shoating my .22 at her pet duck, which was paddling
about the edge of the water in front. I mistook it for a wild widgeon. When I
saw her husband in after years it was at BoS'ton, Montreal and the Guadalupe
mountains in Texas, where he was raising horses.

Your venerable correspondent, "Almo," tells in your last number (Sportsmen's
Review) the most wonderful fishing story I ever read of a two and a half hours
he and a dog spent in the Scotland highlands in landing a great salmon when
he was a youngster. But I have the photo of a boy of twelve who caught a large
Otsego bass by his nose in New York state in the Kfs while looking over the
side of the boat into the water. The bass jumped for it and the boy held on
until he had him lifted over the gunwale. He was badly lacerated by its jaws.
I do not recall the names of the fishing party.

In 1879 the EngHsih cricketers had great contests at Staten Island, N. Y., and
when their secretary, Edwin Brown, was about to return to England with Richard
Daft and his party he wrote a compliment to my assistant, Frank Satterthwaite,
for cultivating the trans-Atlantic game in this country. He expressed an intense
wish for the success of "Forest and Stream."

Right here may be a good place to correct another prevalent error regarding
the fireproof quality of the salamander, which both ancient and modern literature
have represented as being able to withstand a degree of heat which would quickly
prove fatal to any other form of life. Yet there is something in the fire tradition.
I have had myself the most positive ocular evidence that this interesting species
of lizard could walk right into fire and not be burned. But my eyes deceived me.
This tiny creature, we know, like all of its kind, is able to ad'apt its color to its
environment ; and when in the precincts of a charcoal burner in the Tennessee
mountains, I saw one of them assume a scarlet hue and walk right into the
cincture of white ashes which bordered the red-hot coal's of the woodkiln, I felt
convinced that truth had come to the support of allegory and tradition. (Mind,
I have not said that I saw him walk into the flame.) However, to be positive,
where such momentous issues were at stake, I poked the place where the lizard
went in, and almost instantly ousted' him out, alive and active. Like the three
Israelites in Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace, there was no smell of fire on its
cuticle. It then occurred to me to test the temperature of its ash-bed with my
bare finger, and I found it quite tolerable, and not at all disagreeable on a frosty
morning up in the mountains. It was certainly a secure hiding-place from almost
any other creature than an inquisitive naturalist. It was the last place where one
would think of looking for anything but a roast.

Half a century ago I was a guest of the Messrs. Russell at the Russell
House on Palace street. Both were great salmon fishermen. One had a spliced
ash rod 18 feet long, in two parts, which became mine by gift. Not very many
of my frieiids of those days are now to be found in Quebec. Sir James LeMoine,
however, is one and Mr. John S. Budden was another. Both are still alive in the
age of 86, and they write their names to amanuensis letters. Mr. Buden became
very intimate with Messrs J. U. Gregory, Geo. M. Fairchild, Jr., E. T. D. Cham-
bers, W. C. Hall, Walter Moodie and Col. Rhodes, and with them he fished most
of the accessible waters of the district of Quebec.

52 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

Dr. Elliott Coues, assistant surgeon general U. S. A., secretary of the Haydeu
survey, and naturalist to the United States government, is well known in libraries.
Coues and I were co-workers in the Labrador expedition in 1861, when his labors
were first begun, and helped him jerk his Puffins out of their holes and reach with
m}^ rifle some specimens beyond the reach of his shotgun. I have always felt
cause for gratitude that we were not all poisoned by the arsenic he used in
making skins. For the skins went to his collection and the carcasses into the
galley pot invariably.

Did I ever see a bear? Oh, yes! Many scores, of size and color. Ever kill
one? Not exactly; but Jack Stewart killed one for me among the huckleberry
bushes on Grand Lake Island, in Maine, in I80&. We traced his tracks on the sand
bottom across from the main land to the island, and stalked him in parallel lines
up the island, keeping each other within sight of the water space. Jack jumped
him at his noon siesta after his feast, and shot him with his .38 revolver. Then
he took off his hide and gave me a two-ounce vial of his oil with my .22
as a voucher of my prestige. But I have seen many others in my backwoods
rambles in Alaska, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Montana, Minnesota, New York and
the Maritime Provinces, and I have owned and raised quite a few cubs, black
and cinnamon. Some seventeen years ago, when I was in the Catskills, I domiciled
with John W. Rusk, hunter and photographer, at Haines Falls, and we stalked
the North mountain quite considerable for grouse and bob-cats. We , saw their
tracks by the springs, and occasionally a black bear showed himself to us when we
were wading a trout stream, fishing. John used to set a fourteen-pound trap at
the garbage pile, half a mile back of the Kaaterskill Hotel, and got one almost
every time. He would make a contract with the young sportsmen at Sunset
Park and neighboring resorts to get them a bear for fifteen dollars ; they to have
the hide and carcass. It was a good snap for the fellows, and the three of us
would start off for the North mountain, where there are bob-cats and other
varmints, and after a search through the woods, swing around to the garbage pile,
and at the right moment John would point out the bear and let the man shoot.
Of course the trick transpired at once, but the victiiti never let on; and so the
game was repeated, ad captandum, and every young hunter vaunted his prowess
and exhibited bear oil, hide and claws as trophies.

The most .<vanguinary story to my recollection was the tearing to pieces of
the hunter whose cabin was near Fort McGuiniss, Wyoming. Briefly, he had shot
a buffalo from his doorway, but before he could get off the hide a she grizzly
with two half-grown cubs almost killed him while he was skinning. He fought
them all to their death with his sheath knife, because he had left his rifle in
his cabin.

CHAPTER IX.

PARK REGION OF MINNESOTA.

On the line of the Northern Pacific Railway, away up on the western edge
of the inimitable Park region of Minnesota, in Becker county, lies Detroit Lake,
a delectable body of water, with thirty-seven miles of irregular short line, filled
with game fish. It is the central gem of 237 associated lakes, all- lying in the same
county; a galaxy of pure and limpid reservoirs, only made possible by the
impetuous spasms of the glacial period.

* Thirty-seven years ago, when this magnificent transcontinental railway was
pushing its toilsome and uncertain course toward the Pacific Ocean, wholly uncon-
scious of the natural wonders before it which the coming years were to unfold,
an eastern gentleman of sagacious forecast, who had looked the country over,
named Detroit Lake as the future lacustrine resort of the Northwest, predicting
the day to be not distant when those who loved nature better than the behests of
fashion would flock to this region as their predecessors had thronged the Adiron-
dacks when all its attractions were primitive. He located a home for himself on
the chosen spot, and the lapse of time has brought his prediction to the front.
Comfortable hostelries, with every modern appointment and every luxury of the
table, receive hundreds of summer guests. The bounty of the forests and the
lakes is poured into their steward's laps with ever changing profusion, and all
those accessories of boats, pavilions, music, livery, lawn and indoor games, which
make a watering place continually enjoyable, are provided with the same open-
handed beneficence which characterizes their domestic economy. Guests who
sojourn here find the comforts of home without its cares; a reprieve from toil,
and an indulgence whose exercise is grateful and compensating. Appreciating the
advantages of a juxtaposition of town and county — for Detroit City is a county
seat with a population of fifteen hundred — visitors have built cottages and villas
along the lake shore; clubs with memberships culled from various distant cities
have cosy sites on blufTs along the shores. Fleets of row boats, sail boats and
naphtha launches enliven the broad expanse of water, and daily picnics make its
confines merry.

There is a delightful carriage drive around the entire lake, which is for the
most part shaded, and lateral roads ramify at intervals to adjacent lakes and wind
through alternate groves and prairie, and undulating farm lands, neatly fenced and
radiant with the promise of the harvest. The whole landscape is aglow with
verdure and vocal with notes of birds and parti-colored insects. It is odorous
with summer perfume. The sunlit ripples sparkle between the flecking silhouette
of leaves and fill the view with constant surprises, such as metropolitan treasurers
have appropriated millions of money to imitate or reproduce in urban parks.
Surely it is difficult to express or enumerate the charms of this rare Minnesota
Interlaken ! I have looked the entire continent almost over, and am free to say
that, for a country devoid of mountain features, and partaking purely of the
pastoral, I have found none to equal this in beauty and ever-changing variety.
The very contour of the land makes this possible.

Consider ! This is the center of the great reservoir system which supplies some

(53)

54 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

of the North have their common sources. So close together, and so near akin by
riuvial births, that the deities of the woods have always marveled why they turned
their backs to each other and took opposite directions, one to the freezing Arctic,
and the other to the tepid, sun-kissed waters of the South Atlantic. In the very
cradle of these variant temperaments and erratic moods, in this sylvan nursery of
flippant streams, we find a congregation of lakes and feeders so numerous that they
are hardly named or numbered. The state geologist enumerates ten thousand.
In aggregation and arrangement they seem the very counterpart oi the galaxy
across the sky. There are lakes of every conceivable conformation and outline:
round lakes with pebbly shores; oblong lakes margined with wild rice and reeds;
lakes spangled with pond lily pods in June ; lakes with deeply indented bays and
projecting points half submerged and bristling with rushes; lakes with shores
wooded to the brink and filled with wooded islands ; lakes with flat shores, bold
shores, sloping shores, lakes with confronting bluffs and promontories. There
are lakes detached and isolated ; lonesome lakes ; lakes in clusters and in pairs ;
spectacle lakes and lakes in connecting chains, stretching far across the country,
and forming uninterrupted thoroughfares for boats and canoes for a hundred
miles or more.

These chains of lakes constitute the chief charm of the Park Region. The
same feature makes the Adirondacks fascinating. I should say, it made them
fascinating years ago, when the whole tract was free to random footsteps set
thitherward, but measurably restricted now.

An active temperament tires of the monotony of a fixed cottage by the side
of an individual lake, with the diurnal row, the bath, and the still fishing, the
hammock and the book, and the protracted lullaby of idleness and loafing. It
loves to spread its wings and launch out into the unseen and unknown, expectant
&t every sharp curve of the sinuous river, emerging from the umbrageous covert
of the forest into the broad expanse of a far-reaching lake, swinging the oars with
a long stoke across its bosom ; seeking an outlet where the rushes conceal it, and
camping, perchance, where night overtakes, with the veil drawn tightly over the
uncertainties of tomorrow. It is only the agnostic who is truly happy, that is,
if he appreciates the good gifts of the Great Giver through whom alone he is
manifested, or ever can be. What would it satisfy or profit to be omniscient?
Dare any one declare that the lapse from time into eternity will vouchsafe a
perfect and comprehensive revelation? or that the pursuit of knowledge will ever
reach an ultimate fullness of that which is knowable? And if it were attainable,
who can say that lethargy would not follow repetition, as surfeit overcomes the
anaconda?

Now the wilderness attracts most when it is presented in new and constantly
varying aspects ; and it was because the Rev. Adirondack Murray was able to so
present it that he drew after him a large and enthused following. He did not
daze the novice by turning all at once upon his unaccustomed eyes the full
effulgence of the sportsman's paradise, but he opened momentary vistas towards
the light of truth and read aloud the simple narrative of personal experience and
impressions which touched a sympathetic chord in the hearts of his listeners, and
it aroused a latent impulse, and provided a new sensation for those who had
l")ecome surfeited with the perfunctory sound of watering-place festivities.

Already the itineraries of the Park Region of Minnesota are as well defined
and substantially fixed as are those of the Adirondacks. Tourists encounter
tourists in their incoming and outgoing by lake and river ; the whole territory is
alive with boats and guides, and the welkin rings with the clarion laughter of

PARK REGION OF MINNESOTA. 55

liealthy women and hearty children, who, thank goodness, live to leaven the soggy,
half-baked sodality of jeunesse doree who would incontinently frown them out.
Therefore let the true disciples of the rod and gun, and the women with the sun
hats and bloomers go up and possess the land forthwith. All the lakes are filled
with fish in variety astonishing. There are pike, pickerel, pike-perch muscallonge,
black bass, silver bass, rock bass, calico bass, striped bass, white and yellow perch,
croppies, sheeps heads, suckers, red horse, sunfish, stem-winders, bullheads, white-
fish, sturgeon, and that rare variety of coregonus termed tullibee. And, blessed
be the fact! the domain is free, not hedged in like most of the rugged wilderness
regions of the west and east. Ah, my comrades with the blanching hair ! where
.'ire the haunts of our youth? What pleasures of angling we have had in the
preterit! and whither shall we look in the future unless it be to the Land o' Lakes!
An echo comes out from the glens of the Adirondacks : "Are they not all pre-
served?" and iteration booms forth from the Laurentian watershed : "Are we not
preserved?" Well, yes; quite so. So are finnan baddies and salt mackerel. Along
the high crags and in the deep glens I read everywhere the posted notices : "No
trespassing," "No fishing here," and I find that vast areas have been made exclusive
by law, and that the rich have forged the flat. All along the pathless woods where
moccasin tread scarce disturbs the deer, I see the placards as flamboyant as the
signs of Mandrake Pills and Schenck's Bitters in New Jersey, proclaiming that
only the lord of the manor is entitled to fish or hunt on the forty-mile tract which
he has sequestrated, and that this gilt-edged club of ten has vast territorial rights
which are beyond encroachment; and I see no open vista through which a hopeful
ray of light protrudes for impecunious toilers, who anticipate for eleven weary
months the fruitless outing assigned to the twelfth. And all the Populist legisla-
tures, which form like fungi on the body politic, can bring no remedy, or do more
than voice the popular discontent. So I reflect and ask : "What is the perhaps
vulgar but very numerous public eventually to do for its fishing?" Must it forego
its inherent birthright as a community and crush out its instinct? Where are the
ninety and nine to go when every known place is pre-empted by the rich?

* Last fall I was up on the White Earth Indian Reservation, twenty-five miles
north of Detroit. Twenty-five hundred red men domiciliate there, where they
cultivate small farms and the rudimental amenities of civilization. It is a regal
domain, heavily timbered, with much morass and tangle interspersed. Like the
■'Black Forest" of Germany, it is sequestrated to the lords regnant and harbors
many deer and bear, with millions of wild fowl and small game. Mallards, wood
ducks, and some other varieties breed abundantly. Otters, minks, muskrats, cranes,
herons, buzzards, hawks, ospreys, squirrels, timber-grouse, hedgehogs and gray
rabbits are there and propagate. By invitation of a resident, the visitor may hunt,
but not otherwise, unless he marries into the tribe and becomes a squaw man; so
that the game is hardly worth the candle. Taking a redskin from this section, who
had wandered down to Detroit with some roots, skins and small wares to sell, we
paddled down the chain of lakes to Fergus Falls, fishing the outlets for black bass,
and took the Great Northern Railroad at that point for return. One day the
i^camp served a bold osprey a shabby trick by transfixing a fish with a spike to a
square board and setting it adrift. Then the osprey dropped down on the bait
with a whack, and immolated himself on the point of the spike. Injun big medi-
cine— wagh !

• The foregoing chapter was written sixteen years ago, by Mr. Charles Hallock, and is as
interesting now as then. — Editor.

CHAPTER X.

THE UXDINE FISHING PARTY UNDER FIRE.

When the Undine fishing party started up the Chicago & Northwestern Rail-
road from the Twin Cities, the day was not more ominous of direful conflagration
♦■han any previous day had been for months. During all that fervid summer of
1894, from May until September, the atmosphere had been murky with smoke so
that it was difficult to see or breathe, and the constant solar heat made it still more
oppressive. All day long, from w-eek to week, the lurid sun glared down through
the smudgy vapor like a redhot bull's eye upon the parched and gasping earth.
No rain fell, leaves and grass curled up with drouth, springs failed, rivers ran dry,
and farmers said such a long dry spell had never been known before in Wisconsin.
Occasionally a grateful zephyr would mitigate the fervent heat and clear the
air a little, but in general an unremitting calm prevailed from day to day, dead
and stifling as the interior of a bake-oven. Persons who had been up the road
asi-erted that the smoke came from forest fires two hundred miles away, which
had got into the muskegs or peat bogs, and were bound to burn ; that large areas
were burning, and unless rain came speedily the whole forest would be consumed.
Already large gangs of mill men and farm hands were out fighting fire, and some
houses and live stock had been destroyed. But the half-baked denizens of the
towns who were gasping for relief remembered only the refreshing coolness of
the sequestered lakes in that far-off wilderness where they had sestivated the year
before, and chafed for its delights. They could not realize that their anticipated
refuge was the very seat and source of present misery, and so those who were
able to flee the town hastend northward like joyous moths toward the candle
flame; and the fast train bore them on, while the anglers aboard selected flies for
seductive casts and counted in their minds the scores of gamey bass, trout and
rauskalonge which should come to their hands after they reached the delectable
land of lakes.

Just here it is necessary to interpolate, for intelligent comprehension of the
situation, that the ramifications of the Chicago & Northwestern system spread
over one-third of the great pine region of North Wisconsin, giving easy access
to at least thirty trout streams and innumerable lakes with comfortable hostelries
at easy intervals, which one can patronize when he does not wish to camp. Some
of the lakes are broad and sparkling like inland seas, lying close to the railroad
track. Upon others, hidden in the depths of the forest, sunlight never falls except
at summer noon. With a portable canvas boat and a guide one can reach most
all of them by logging roads, and with a little effort and some endurance of black
flies, mosquitoes, deer flies, wood ticks and flies, gnats and midgets, fish in waters
which even now are virgin ; for the physical character of Northern Wisconsin
is such that a moiety of it will remain for half a century at least as much of a
jungle as the Florida everglades, to which the country bears some small resem-
blance in respect to alternate hummocks and swamps, grass meadows and high pine
ridges.

I remember well, a dozen years ago, how the lumbermen and sportsmen
rejoiced when this same railroad made its bold push northward to Lake Superior

(56)

THE UNDINE FISHING PARTY UNDER FIRE. 57

and let in the light of the western sun upon the gloomy tamarack swamps and
the thickets of balsam, which had grown up in the impenetrable shade; and how,
through the open vistas, the sheen of nameless lakes, whose existence had not
even been suspected, burst forth unexpectedly, here and there, like the glory of
new constellations. Innumerable streams leaped out of the secluded recesses with
joyous bounds, and crossed the surveyor's lines, sparkling in the sun. All the
waters seemed alive wfth fish anxious to be hooked, and even the timorous deer
waltzed forth into the unwonted sunshine and threw up their heels in the enjoy-
ment of a new sensation. Such an abundantly stocked preserve was never found
before. Such multitudes of deer roamed in the forests! Such countless myriads
of trout filled the ice-cold streams ! Such monster muskalonge ploughed the
lacustrine depths like submarine torpedoes. Multitudes of moose paths were dis-
closed, and elaborate dams built by beavers, old Indian trails in use for centuries,
clandestine war paths long hidden by the bush, windfalls marking the tracks of
unrecorded cyclones, frames of abandoned tepees with the litter of former occu-
pation strewn about.

Since then gun and axe have made much havoc. But enough game yet
remains for reasonable sport, and as many giant muskalonge are annually towed
out of the inky depths as there ever were. The black bass are just as sportive
and quite as numerous, and anglers who make this their favorite resort are seldom
persuaded to try elsewhere. As for bears and deer the fires I am to write about
routed out far more than were supposed to be in the covers. They appeared by
hundreds.

August and September are the months preferred by anglers for lake fishing.
The bloom has then passed off, flies have gone and the fish bite better altogether.
Probably five hundred anglers were on the Wisconsin lakes when the memorable
conflagration culminated on September 1, wiping out expansive areas of forest
and licking up towns and villages like straw. In Minnesota the destruction was
fourfold greater than in Wisconsin, especially in respect to loss of life; neverthe-
less, fifty-four houses were burned at Shell Lake, the immense lumber plant at
Baronette Lake was entirely wiped out, and scores of mills and dwellings which
were scattered over the country were consumed. The beleaguered inhabitants
fought fire for a fortnight before the dread climax came, and when they could
hold out no longer relief trains came to their rescue, running the gauntlet of the
flames, and carried them to places of safety. Train No. 91 took 400 refugees from
Shell Lake to Spooner, and No. 61 made two trips through the fire to Rice Lake,
saving many. It was an awful experience.

When the Undine five were put down at Bashaw Lake in the afternoon it
was not without misgivings that they saw the train depart. A vague foreboding
of evil oppressed them, and the tent poles w-ere not set up with the hilarity which
usually attends the first steps of an outing. From above the dense umbrage 6t
pine forest lying toward the west a volume of blue and white smoke rose upright
into the air like a pillar of cloud, apparently not half a dozen miles away. Here
and there on the visible horizon other masses of rising smoke indicated where
smouldering or quiescent fires were insidiously eating their way into the precious
timber. The atmosphere was stifling and intensely hot; pungent with resinous
fumes. Numerous birds were flitting over the waters on uneasy wings, and such
<mall creatures as were moving acted in an uncanny way. The meteorological
condition was little changed from the summer normal — namely, a fixed calm,
with a leaden sky mottled with fleecy exhalatior;s from the burning forests, through

68 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

which the sun gleamed just now with a palHd, ominous light, as if eclipsed. The
presages, presumably, were akin to those which hung over Pompeii before the
ashes fell. Suddenly, without other premonition, the wind rose perceptibly, and
the tops of the pine forest abreast of the track began to sway with a whirr which
whispered of evil. It was the first stiff breeze that had blown for weeks, and it
came with a puff, hot as a simoon. Almost instantly the volume of smoke which
had so long hung like a pall in the west disappeared, and an intense crimson
flush suffused the w^hole quarter, visible high above the tallest trees ; and then in
a jiffy the breeze freshened to a gale, and the gale developed into a hurricane, and
vhe whole air at once seemed serried with darts and arrows of flame. Trees
bowed and bent half double, and balls of fire rolled off their fronds and dropped
hissing hot into the lake. The whole firmament was ablaze and resonant with
uproar.

Such an instantaneous change from quiescent mood to wild resorts and devasta-
tion was never experienced since the fateful days of Sodom. Every cheek
blanched, and a wail arose from a quintette of white lips :

"Great heavens ! we are lost !"

The anglers did not then know it, but the terrible blast which they were
experiencing was but the outer verge of the great cyclone which was at that
moment wiping out the town of Hinckley, in Minnesota, seventy miles due west.
Fortunately it continued but a few minutes and then lulled. The respite was
grateful, for the heat was insupportable, even under the blessed wind-break which
sheltered them. In the brief interval, however, a startling transformation was
wrought in the landscape, and singular results followed. It was discovered that
the forest was by this time ablaze on both sides of the lake, leaving the devoted
party literally hemmed in between the two fires. At first thought, the situation
seemed to augur sure death by cremation, but old Bert, the guide, who was with
them, demonstrated quite to their comfort of mind that the main fire which had
Deen burning for weeks past just west of the lake had divided, as it is often known
lo do in prairie and woodland conflagrations, and left a wedge-like area of
nnburned forest, which, though not exempt from ultimate destruction, would for
the present burn but slowly on the lateral edges ; so that the party might eventually
find safety by crossing the lake after the fire had swept past, provided they could
only keep from being baked or roasted in the interim. Their situation was very
much like that of a Thanksgiving turkey in an old-fashioned tin oven.

After a brief lull the tempest rose again as violently as before, and thereafter,
for two agonizing hours, there followed intermittent gusts and lulls. Great
surges of flame would fill the air for a time, swooping down on the lake with the
rush of demons, w-hile pennants of fire streamed out from the tops of the pines
and masses of blazing matter hurtled like missiles over a battle field. Then all
would be still again, involving awful suspense, with direful explosions in the air,
pyrotechnics and rings of fire. Meanwhile large numbers of deer were seen to
emerge from the forest and plunge into the lake, single and two or three together,
swallowing the water in great gulps. Some bears, too, came in. Multitudes of
birds fluttered over its surface, and collections of small animals and myriads of
insects gathered on the cleared space between the forest and the shore. Occa-
sionally an eagle, w^ith languid beat of wings, would come soaring before the
advancing flames, and once a poor, unfortunate which was just able to reach the
top of a tall, unscathed rampike was seen to cling to it for an instant and then
topple over, exhausted, into the abyss below. Least expected of all was the egress

THE UNDINE FISHING PARTY UNDER FIRE. 59

of two Ojibway Indians from the fringe of forest who shuffled down to the
margin of the lake, where they drank inordinately. Then, soaking their blankets
m the refreshing fluid, they wrapped them about their heads and shoulders and
sat down, with their legs in the lake. Taking the hint, the fishing party were
quick to follow suit, and there they sat for the remainder of two mortal hours of
dread and suffering, uncertain of the end, when, fortunately, the hurricane spent
its force and the fire had accomplished its greatest mischief.

The following morning, as soon as the glowing embers had cooled sufficiently
to permit a passage, a train came through and picked the anglers up, blistered and
half blind. Their departure was like a release from Hades. Oh ! that blessed
minister of deliverance ! And rain came, too, not long afterward. In the torrid
cities the weather bureau had foretold its occurrence and one could almost hear
the patter of its advancing mercy as it hastened from the west. Hundreds of
stricken and dying creatures were panting for its blessed relief, and finally it came,
cool and beneficent, stirring the drooping leaves and filling the distressed fields
and homes with refreshment and good cheer. Then followed a copious deluge
which drenched the kindling faggots all over the burned district, preventing the
spreading of the fire, and when the next rosy dawn flushed the breaking day, lo !
the streams were swollen and turbid, and water stood ankle deep in the hollows
of the meadows and ploughed fields.

CHAPTER XI.

RANDOM CASTS IN THE LAND OF LAKES.

The state of Minnesota is so emphatically the land of lakes that this designa-
tion should become peculiarly its own. No other region of the globe can compare
with it in this respect. In its central portion the greater area is water. The
known number of lakes is seven thousand, and an estimate of its unnamed and
unexplored lakes adds half as many more at least ! I remember to have sent you
a year ago or more an enumeration of the larger number, given by counties.

As Commissioner of the Department of Lakes and Summer Resorts, repre-
sented at the New Orleans exposition last winter, it came within my province to
visit no less than fifty-eight of the counties in this state, and this duty has made
me familiar with their physical features. In the "Park Region," now easily
acsessible by the St. Paul and Manitoba Railroad, where the lakes are most
numerous, I have been interested in noting the many pairs of lakes — considerable
bodies of water separated by narrow strips of land which are often a mile or more
in length. Some of these are mere causeways, like a railroad embankment, wide
enough for two carriages to pass abreast, while others are studded with oak trees
of many years' growth, contributing much to the sylvan beauty of the landscape.
These causeways invariably unite what w^re origihally projecting points of land in
an individual lake. It is a peculiarity of nearly all the larger lakes that, wherever
there is a point, a bar makes out, dropping down at the end into deep water.
These bars are sometimes wholly of sand, but the submerged portions are usually
made up of round boulders. In the deep water are the best fishing places for black
bass in mid-summer. I suppose these bars are formed mainlv in early spring by
shoves of ice, assisted at various times by wave action. I notice that the shores of
many lakes are encircled by a narrow embankment or ridge some three feet higher
than the land behind it, and these are being continually enlarged by storms and
movements of ice. I have found many of these ridges bordering meadows and on
high ground in the midst of growing timber, indicating shore lines of ancient
lakes, which existed at a time when a larger portion of the country was submerged
than now. Geological inference easily accounts for such formations, but they are
often puzzling to the uninformed.

The distribution of fish throughout these lakes is very interesting. The pickerel
everywhere prevail. Bass are found within a large but circumscribed area, of
which the greater part lies east of the Mississippi River. In the northeastern lakes,
east and north of the St. Louis River, lake trout are found, notably, and I don't
know but exclusively, in the three extensive counties which border Lake Superior.
The great northern pike and the mascalonge are found in many of the lakes in
company with the black bass. Wall-eyed pike are even more widely distributed
than the black bass, but far less so than the pickerel. In Cook County Mr. John
M. Miller, the county auditor, informs me that there is a variety of white bass
speckled blue, but I have not seen it myself. It is caught in a lake in Range 5, west

Referring to the weekly records of big catches which are printed in the
American Angler, I confess to a feeling of something like disgust whenever I read

(60)

RANDOM CASTS IN THE LAND OF LAKES. 61

them. In the name of Izaak, what is the use of catching so many fish as the
majority of anglers aspire to do? Does the record of great counts establish one's
title to superiority as an angler? Does it prove anything more than a super-
abundance of fish? I know that these boat-loads are captured by main strength
and not by delicate manipulation, because ten minutes is little enough time to land a
heavy fish on fine tackle. Six fish an hour for four hours' morning fishing and two
hours' evening fishing — thirty-six fish — is a splendid score, and all that ought ever
to come to a reasonable man's boat or basket. Just think of the labor and finesse
involved in the feat, especially in a tideway at an outlet, where the current is
strong !

Within the past five years the Brule River, near Bayfield, Wisconsin, has come
into prominent notice as a trout strfeam, and since the Northern Pacific and the
St. Paul and Omaha Railroads have extended their lines almost to the river's brink,
making the journey easy and short, anglers are flocking to it by scores. I think
the river is one hundred and fifteen miles long. It is a marvelous river, and 1
know of no water in the world which is so abundantly stocked with trout. It
fairly teems with them. Where it debouches into Lake Superior its mouth is broad,
and in June the big four-pound trout come cruising along the rocky shore from
far and wide and are caught without stint. Tens of thousands of very large trout
are taken from the Brule along the- entire stream every year, and I cannot imagine
how it is kept from depletion except by annual accessions from the great lake. It
is f\o uncommon thing for a couple of anglers to report one thousand trout as the
result of three or four days" fishing! Now what is the use? Couldn't they be
content with enough to eat and a quantum suff to bring away? What becomes of
the first day's catch? "Ask of the winds," etc. Only the take of the last day wiM
be fresh enough to fetch home.

But I can tell you of something worse than this — of men who seine the lakes
of fish and feed the product to their hogs! Why cannot men learn to be provi-
dent of good gifts and considerate of other people to come after them?

During the month past nearly all the lakes have been "in bloom." When they
are in this condition the fishing is slack. The bloom is the suspended seed of
aquatic plants, which are disseminated everywhere, and finally become water soaked
and sink to take root and reproduce. There are different kinds of seed, and, like
the seeds of land plants, they do not all bloom at once, so that some lakes are
clear at the time when others are "working." My impression is that the fish eat
large quantities of them, and, becoming surfeited thereby, decline to bite the
anglers' baits. I doubt if the seed has any deleterious effect upon their gills. It
is in a sense a protection to them at a period when many kinds of fish are recupe-
rating after spawning. It is a protection also to the young fry. The water is
thick and partially hides them from their predatory enemies. There is nothing
noxious about the water when it is in bloom, though it has been stated that
cattle have been made ill by drinking it. A strong microscope will assist the
student in his investigation of this phenomenon.

There is a fish quite common in the lakes of Minnesota and Wisconsin, called
the sheepshead {Haploidonotus grunniens), which is not generally recognized and
not often caught- In some waters I have found it quite palatable, and in others
it is quite the reverse. They are not usually esteemed for food in waters east of
the Mississippi, but I find the Minnesota article make an excellent boiled dish or
chowder. The sheepshead are the only submarine musicians we have in the West,

62 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

and in some localities are vulgarly yclept "grunts" by those who call themselves
good judges of music.

I notice by the Bismarck Journal that a man named Harmonic has started out
alone from Livingston, on the Yellowstone, to make a canoe voyage to New
Orleans. It is easy enough to start, but not so easy to get through. The Yellow-
stone above Glendive is filled with wicked rapids and is the most dangerous part of
the cruise. Men often run the Yellowstone in suitable boats, and many are drowned
every year, notwithstanding. There is a gentleman here at Lake Minnetonka, a
professional oarsman and boat-builder, named Capt. John B. Brooks, formerly of
New Haven, Conn., who ran from Livingston to a point in Iowa, but his name
would carry him through where others would fail. He came down in a fifteen-foot
boat, the latter part of the- way through running ice in November, and suffered a
great deal of hardship. He passed the worst rapids by keeping the head of the
boat up stream and plying the oars to guide and steady her, dropping astern as
rapidly as good judgment and circumstances permitted.

By and by you will hear from me in Alaska, and I hope to add something novel
to the contributed matter of the Angler.

* Written in 1885.

REMINISCENCES OF BIG LAKE.

Twenty-five years ago this month of *June I started from St. Paul with a
prospecting party for the Red River Valley, from whose distant but now easily
accessible precincts I am at present writing. In those days there were no stage
coaches. There were very few houses a hundred miles north or west of the
embryo capital of Minnesota. The Red River Trail drew out its sinuous length
over an unexplored prairie to Pembina on the Canadian boundary, 400 miles away,
and over this route we made our tedious and lonely journey, not without danger of
molestation from marauding bands of Indians. Camping the first night at Big
Lake, some twenty miles from St. Anthony Falls, we found a single settler located
near the shore. He was sole monarch of the solitude. The lake was nearly circu-
lar— one of those beautiful gems for which Minnesota is so famous — and its pebbly
shores were encircled with a belt of lily pads, whose pure white blossoms breathed
fragrance into the atmosphere like the floral wreath of a rural bride. While hunting
for agates among the rounded stones on the margin a crank and dilapidated dugout
was discovered among the alders, and simultaneously the plash of some sort of
large fish on the outer rim of the pads suggested sport and its most favorable
opportunity.

If a person could have walked with an elfin tread over the green enamelled
platform of those broad floating pads, he would have speedily discovered their
glossy surfaces to be populous with the lower orders of animal creation ; slippery
green batrachians, filmy spiders, wrigglers, caddis flies, beetles, ephemerae, and a
whole menagerie of creeping and winged insects. He would have soon learned why
the big fish were thus patroling the outer rim of the circle and foraging along the
border. A little scrutiny would have shown him that the lesser world of inferior
things is like the higher realm of human existence ; that there are reckless, careless
and self-opinionated among all classes; that many are self-willed and venturesome;
that often, when we are in the midst of fullest enjoyment and the confidence of
apparent security, danger lurks ; that death is hidden among the flowers and beneath
the cloth of gold. Unwary frogs would leap from the pads into the pellucid
depths, and awkward bugs tumble over the edges into the brink, hardly touching the
surface of the water ere they were swallowed into the capacious maw of a gigantic

RANDOM CASTS IN THE LAND OF LAKES. 63

bass. Meanwhile their unsuspecting comrades foraged for sweets among the
coronals and petals of the delicious lilies, and sauntered under the umbrages of the
wax-like calices and waltzed about the shiny floors of the broadening leaves, destined,
possibly, to pass off next into the abyss of fate.

It was at the first flush of the long summer twilight which lingers far into the
night of the northern sky, and all of our prospecting party were tired with an
unwonted tramp, for they had not yet become hardened to the average of thirty
miles per diem (which afterward became their regulation march). An early bed
offered greater attractions than angling. No one had contemplated trying his luck
until the next morning, and quite likely the most interested of the party would have
continued to loll on the grass in camp and listlessly watch the intermittent plashes
of the fish around the lake, had not the already heightened interest been enhanced
and intensified by the shadowy apparition of the pioneer settler creeping through
the brush toward the water.

He held in his hard-fisted grip a ponderous wattle, with the tip projecting for-
ward as he strode, and when he reached the margin of the water he waded boldly
in among the pads up to his middle and lifting the pole with both hands slung it
first backward over his shoulder and then forward toward the water with a mighty
■'swish!" Some large object gleamed momentarily from the end of the transitory
radius which his heavy line described, and cutting an impalpable perimeter in the
air, came down upon the bosom of the lake kerswash just outside the pads'! It
was a whole frog which he had on for bait, and its dangling legs were tremendous
to behold The astonished spray which the blow threw up had barely time to
reflect the crimson of the glowing west ere there was a great commotion in the
water and a struggle for the pole ; but presently, with one mighty heave, the doughty
fisherman bent his inborn force and high in air another object sped brushward,
and like a collapsed meteor fell with a sickening thud into the woods behind, far
out of sight. A protracted investigation discovered a three-pound bass, "big-mouth"
variety, and no mistake, for the whole frog was in it! This same unmutilated frog
answered for a second fish, and as promptly a second fish answered to the bait.

A repetition of this extraordinary achievement stirred the latent enthusiasm
within my own breast and kindled the fire of the ardent angler. My tired limbs
forgot their fatigue, but my hands and genius had not forgotten their cunning.
Hastily rumaging through my camp kit I found a trolling spoon and line, and
rushing down to the canoe I jumped into it and shoved out into the lake. Th«
wind was. blowing briskly off shore, so laying aside the paddle I let her drift
across and paid out line as she went. The dugout was so narrow that I could not
sit in it squarely ; but lying sideways on my hip I did the best I could, and presently
got a thumping strike. My position was so awkward that I couldn't half see
behind. I couldn't see my fish unless the boat was moving sideways, but I managed
to haul in by a sort of hand- over-shoulder maneuver, and finally got him into the
boat. I managed to get three fish in going once across the lake, and as the supply
was ample for our breakfast 1 left the canoe on the lee shore and walked back to
camp.

Those were the first bass I ever caught in my life, and the sensation was over-
powering. I don't know if Big Lake still keeps up its reputation as a fishing
resort, but it' fairly swarmed with black bass in those days, and I envy the old
pioneer the sport which he might have had if he had only known how to make the
most of it.

•June, 1882. '

CHAPTER XII.

A PERIUiLS AUVEXTURE AT KANAWHA FALLS.

I AM moved to indite a reminiscence of Kanawha Falls, covering a moment of
fearful peril, out of which a kind and overruling providence for some wise purpose
doubtless provided a way of escape. Even now, thirty-five years afterward, I never
hear the roar of a cataract without associating it with the rumble of an express
train dashing through a rock cut, and a vision of two helpless human creatures
clinging with lacerated fingers to the excoriating side walls from which the suction
almost tore them.

You know there is a curvilinear cut through the marginal ledge which abuts
the river quite within gunshot of the Falls. Well, at times, when meteriological
conditions favor, the imdertone of revolving car wheels blends so intimately with
the resonance of the tumbling waters that the keenest sense can hardly distinguish
them apart. You are aware of this fact also? It was like this, then (ora pro
nobis!), on that beautiful July morning in 1876, when wife and 1 went fishing high
up in the life-giving mountain atmosphere of the Gawley canyon, 2,000 feet above
the level of the deep, deep sea. S'death ! we didn't know it at the time, but we
were even then "betwixt the devil and the deep sea," but of this later on.

The inimitable guide books of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Company, on
whose picturesque trans-mountain line this wild bit of scenerj^ is located, says in
its mild, liquescent way : "Kanawha Falls is a pleasant and picturesque scene of
watery waywardness. A ledge of rock thirty feet high extends the width of the
river, and the waters tumble over it in tumultuous fury. The clear mirror-like
basin below the falls stands in strong contrast with the foaming cataract." "Watery
waywardness" is musical alliteration, but it is not sufficiently intensive. "Tumul-
tuous" is correct enough, though I observed no "fury." Much depends, I ween,
upon the situation of the beholder, whether his canoe be careering wildly over the
crest of the cataract, after the fashion of the love-lorn maiden in Indian legend,
about to make the fatal plunge, or whether it be boating quietly ori the "mirror-like
basin," aforesaid, with bending rod and taut line fast to a five-pound bass hung in
the swirl of the midway rock. Moreover, there is an expression of expansiveness
in the half-tone illustration which is not true to nature; for one might imagine
an illimitable horizon with ultima thule lying indefinitely beyond, whereas, really,
the inclosing hills of the Blue Ridge drop abruptly almost to either margin, and
the rapt beholder, sitting in his boat, looks upward to the deep blue zenith against
which their rugged simimits are ambitiously outlined, instead of far away into
Utopian space — envying, forsooth, the flight of the water ousel, which permits the
enjoyment of both elements alike.

Mr. Editor, I am not apt to deal in rhapsody, or go into ecstacies over trans-
cendent landscapes. Your stated summer correspondent, turned loose, with only a
day ofT, is always enthusiastac. His descriptions of sylvan or bucolic haunts are
therefore subject to modification. Like good beer, they are heartiest when they
cflfervesce. But I am no adolescent out for a holiday. I have looked a large part
of this broad continent over, and am free to say that for natural features or
changeful aspect, none can hardly be more beautiful and more striking than those

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A PERILOUS ADVEXTURE AT KANAWHA FALLS. 65

about Kanawha Falls. I passed a pleasant week there with Mr. Beckley, landlord,
I think the name was, and every morning during my stay my young wife and I
would pull our skiff from the boat-house landing up river into the spray of the
cataract, and letting it drift into the eddies, cast deft lines at the edge of the
swirl where the still water meets the rough ; and oh ! brethren of the angle, as
sure as I live, the black bass which sport in the Kanawha are full of game and
pride of life, and the water has that odorous woodsy smell which savors of the
lotion which naiads use in their baths. The sunbeams flashing on the wavelets are
the reflection of their bright glances, I ween, and the soft summer zephyrs seem to
waft to our mortal ears the whispers of their amours. Oh, my heart ! What a
blessed lot it is to be a naiad ! Sometimes I would look into my wife's bright
eyes, as she sat in the stern sheets, and almost wish that we two were both naiads
together, at home with the brook trout and shiners, and newts, and batrachians,
and gossamerflies, and all the other quaint creatures which populate the falls and
the pools in the glens. Then, in a happy-go-lucky sort of way, with nothing to
think of or fear, we might toss up the spray with our hands, and join in the
roundelay of the opalled denizen when he exclaims :

"I am Salmon Fontinalis,

To the sparkling fountain born,
And my home is where oxalis,

Heather bell and rose adorn
The crystal basin in the dell ;
Undine, the wood nymph, knows it well,
That is where I lo\e to dwell."

Yet. after all, the pleasure of a summer vacation depend more upon one's
own moods than upon environment. Nature is a potential accessory, but if we are
gross-grained or morose, all the naiads in Undine's realm could not make us happy.
Toads, tarantulas and blue devils would appear under every turned-up stone, nez
pazv?

As I was saying of the Kanawha bass : They are large and comelj', and heavy
of weight, and they pull on the line like the stroke oar of a Harvard crew. They
leap, dive, plunge, sulk, sprint, gyrate and perpetrate all those perfunctory gymnas-
tics which are set down in the fish books, not only bass, but wall-eyed pike, yclept
jack salmon on the Allegheny- slope, running sometimes to twenty pounds in
weight, which are caught best in deep water when the wind is blowing briskly,
with cut fish-bait or minnow, but sometimes with gaudy fly or spoon, for they are
capricious, both as to food and feeding grounds, seldom being found in the same
location or depth of water. There is no better table fish when dressed off with
a hatchet, sccnndem artem, a chop at the head and a clip at the tail, two slits along
the length of the backbone with the keen edge to take out the dorsal, a flip of the
skin from the body like drawing off a glove, and lo ! the thing is done ! The
entrails follow the gills and a clean chunk of boneless meat results. A Minnesota
half-breed taught me that little trick at Detroit Lake, but I wonder how long it
will take me to learn to do it half as well?

The whole mountain region in this section is full of game fish. There are
speckled trout in Cherry Creek, which flows into the Little Kanawha not far from
Ronceverte; in Falling Springs, Anthony's Creek, near Quinnamont, in Rawey
County; in Lost Creek, Glade Creek and several other clear-water streams quite
accessible from points on the railroad. Jackson's River, New River, the Green-
briar and the Gawley harbor black bass, pickerel, perch and suckers, with Coving-
ton, Clifton Forge, Talcott and Lowell as eligible starting points. Get off at Alder-
son, West Virginia, and fish east to Fort Springs and west to the Greenbrier stock

66 AN ANGLERS REMINISCENCES.

yards and you catch trout and bass. Indeed, the entire Allegheny range from
Ronceverte to Dunlap is one continuous game preserve, abounding in deer, bears,
turkeys, partridges, rabbits, squirrels, possums, coons and the rest, where I would
sooner take my chances for a bag full or a back load than in Dr. Weble's or
Austin Corbin's expensite preserves. The heart of the Alleghenies and Blue
Ridge, with their stupendous subdivision, is almost a duplicate of the Catskills, but
with more cultivation in parts and a greater diversity of products. Its canyons
are deeper and wilder than the Cloves, and at Covington, for instance, the land-
scape is more extended than at Haines' Falls or Hunter, with inclosing mountains
even higher. Corn fields and log cabins alternate with princely villas and up-to-date
hotels. Wild mountaineers with guns and pocket pistols board the trains at the
way stations much after the fashion of cowboys in Texas, but with much better
behavior, and the experiences of a tenderfoot are likely to be quite as racy and
.stimulating as in Wyoming if he will only drive away a few miles from the rail-
road. All winter long, until March, there is sport for the gunner and bear hunter.
Deer are as plenty as wolves in Montana. One party started sixteen in three days
and got four of them, lately. Turkeys can be had for the baiting. Quails rise in
all the pea patches and green fields. Possums swing from the sweet gums and
'bimmon trees at the full of the moon. Coons come down from their perches at
command when treed, and sport in the forest runs free all through the winter
months, till March. About the middle of May, when the mountain streams clear,
trout fishing begins ; and from that time on, for nine full months succeeding, there
is fulsome enjoyment with rod and reel. Selah.

And now, having delivered up the keys of the fastnesses and keeps of the
forest, I come to the pivotal part of my narrative, and relate my experiences in
the road-cut at Kanawha Falls :

By some strange and happy chance, we had been reading that very morning of
an accident that had happened to an army officer and two ladies who w^ere caught
in a similar trap the previous day with fatal results, and our conversation was
upon that catastrophe as we wended our perilous way along the railroad track.
Our objective point was a jutting ledge which overlooked the falls, where we
expected to make some shore casts for bass. The cut was narrow, the track single,
and the curve so sharp that we could see but a few rods ahead. I was just saying
that it might be well to get out of the cut as expeditiously as possible, when the
premonitory rumble of the approaching train caught our ears. At first it was
muffled ; then rose to intenser sound. I had heard falling water do the same way,
alternating in the cadences, and it seemed not unnatural. But I was not satisfied.
Had we not been on the alert we would certainly have been run down. As it
was, the shave was close.

"Is that the roar of the falls?" I asked apprehensively, with an ear to wind-
ward.

''Ye-es? No — by heaven, no! Look!"

The big bullseye of the locomotive shot into view like a torpedo from a
Zalinski gun. Quick as thought, by that fortuitous prompting which enables the
mind to formulate expedients on the jump, without forecast, I caught my loved
wife from the track and almost flung her against the face of the side wall, where
I pinioned her with arms extended clutching desperately to such projections as
had been left in the blasting. I never hugged her so hard before! Fortunately
there was a depression at that point, though it did not form a deep enough niche to
accommodate the living statuary with comfort. The train whizzed by like a rocket

A PERILOUS ADVENTURE AT KANAWHA FALLS. 67

with a clatter and deafening roar such as a man hears when he is drowning. My
face was toward its approach, and I saw the engineer looking out of the side of the
cab, being as white as a ghost. In a twinkling he was gone, but after that instant
the procession of coaches seemed interminable. A string of Dakota "empties" was
never so long. Before it had half gone by I declared I could hold on to the rocks
no longer. The draft of reflux air which the train displaced in its passage pulled
at me like seven devils, tearing me away. If I quit my hold I would not simply
fall; we would both be hurled like winnowed chaff under the rattling wheels. My
fingers bled, and I felt the flesh tearing from my hands.

At last the ordeal was over and I fell like a log. Wife bent over me and
helped me rise. My palm-leaf hat made a good fan. When I had leaned a while
and rested, we dragged ourselves out of the cut, homeward. We forebore to fish
that day. As we neared the hotel we met a party hurrying out, and received their
greetings. They had apprehended worse results, taking their cue from the train-
men. 'Twas a close call.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE PRINCESS AND THE SALMON.

Again the Restigouche! Egad! it is becoming a famous river! For what
wielder of the two-handed rod, at home or abroad, has not heard its praises sung
anon, if, indeed, he has not himself tasted its delights? What salmon fisher of
renown has not whipped some portion of its majestic length — the largest, longest
and noblest of all Atlantic salmon rivers on either continent?

And why not the Restigouche? Has its too familiar name become a bore? I
grant that there are other rivers wilder and more "wicked," some of them seldom
visited, which might inspire a momentary interest by their vagueness or their novelty,
but to come down to an authentic, well-tried stream, which is statedly crossed by
angler's casts, where can there be found a more captivating stretch of water than
the outflow of the Restigouche? Or a wilderness haunt more charming than its
source among the alders of the "Waagan?"

For my own part, as soon as ever the season of green peas comes round my
thoughts revert instinctively to this New Brunswick stream, and whether I visit it
or abstain, or whatever I do, the old familiar name with its many cherished associa-
tions will never grow trite or tiresome. Its impetuous flow may chafe and scour
the rounded pebbles on its bottom until the end of time, but this abrasion will only
make their polished surfaces all the brighter, and I shall never cease to yearn for
the music of its rapids and the crooning of its pines. .

IT HAS A RECORD.

The Restigouche has a notable record withal. Governor Boucher expatiated on
its charms so far back as 1663. 248 years ago, in his engaging "Histoire Naturelle
des Oiseaux.et des Poissons de la Nouvelle, France." A century later, in 1761, Mr.
Jaffray extolled its attributes as a salmon stream. He was geographer to the Prmce
of Wales and an accepted authority, having written a large folio on Canadian birds,
fishes, woods and rivers, which he entitled "The British Domain." In 1845, after
another lapse of nearly one hundred years, Fred Tolfey, a British officer much
quoted by Frank Forester, and in fact his chosen guide and mentor, published two
illustrated volumes, which were printed in London and received with signal favor.

More recently, in 1863, J. M. Le Moine, the historian of Canada, described the
Restigouche in glowing terms in his "Wilderness Journeyings Through New Bruns-
wick." Harper's Monthly took up the favorite refrain in 1868, and Hallock's "Fish-
ing Tourist" continued it in 1873. Since which date the river has become more
and more the Mecca of high-grade anglers, until at present all its lower reaches
are occupied with stands and cottages, and a fishing privilege along its exclusive
borders is valued more than a college diploma, the mere possession thereof being
accepted as a warrant of social standing.

RECOLLECTIONS OF A VETERAN.

Yet, after all that has been said and printed, how much of its eventful history
remains unwritten ! For my own part, I could fill a volume with personal reminis-
cences of hard-fought battles, lost leaders, blank scores, and hung-up casting lines
which appear as marginalia in the retrospect; and it is upon my pen's point, right

(68)

THE PRINCESS AND THE SALMON. 69

now, to recount an incident of ambidextrous prowess wherein no less a personage
than an estimable daughter of Queen Victoria of England took a hand, maintaining
an obstinate contest for two mortal hours with a 28-pound salmon which had the
temerity to enter the lists with her royal highness. This happened years
ago, before the era of clubs and cottages, while the wilderness was still a solitude
and few chajnpagne bottles glistened on the margin of the stream. Only a few
Canadian officials who had learned the superlative quality of the fishing had acquired
some privileges on the river, and one of them, Mr. Brydges, of the Grand Trunk
Railway, had built himself a house boat christened "Great Caesar's Ghost," which
teams of horses were wont to haul to advantageous stands up the main river or into
the Upsalquitch or Patapedia and even to the Quatawatatamkagearick, sixty miles
above. On the occasion in mind this novel conveyance was appropriated by the
Marquis of Lome, then governor general of Canada, and. the vice-regal party, with
the princess Louise pre-eminent. It was fitted up with dining-room, cabin, prome-
nade deck, berths, kitchen, and every domestic convenience, and was regarded as
more desirable than a short camp, because it could be shifted, and when in mid-
stream was comparatively exempt from mosquitoes and midgets.

Returning to her royal highness, it comes in my way to mention that I was
stopping at that famous old hostelry of line officers and anglers at Quebec, the St.
Louis hotel, when I received one morning the following mandatory note :

Monday. — Mr. Hallock: The Marquis of Lome will be at my office in a few
minutes. If you wish to see him. come down at once.

J. U Gregory.

Mr. Gregory was naval agent at the port. Obedient to the behest, I mounted
a caleche at once and rattled down the hillside through the old Prescott gate to the
lower town and along the one thoroughfare under the cliflF almost tc the very base
of Cape Diamond, where so many people were killed by a landslip not many years
ago, though, as luck would have it, the naval office escaped. Presently I was ushered
aboard the government steamer Druid, which lay at the admiralty wharf, and pre-
sented without ceremony to Major De Winton, Lome's aide de camp, who .has since
received signal promotion in India, and by him to the marquis.

HOW THE PRINCESS APPEARED.

While we were all engaged in discussing salmon rivers and the most killing
flies in an informal sort of way, the princess came forward to the quarter rail
where we were standing and was gracious enough to interest herself in the con-
versation and to inquire about the prospects of the trip to the Restigouche, whither
we were all bound. She looked severely plain and respectable in a dusky alpaca
dress and seaside hat.

After an uneventful interval she mentioned incidentally that she was covering
a lounge in the cabin, and wouldn't I step down the companionway and inspect her
handiwork? Without claiming to be a connoisseur in such things, I put on my best
possible face and expressed myself pleased with what I saw; and, indeed, everything
in the apartment was very charming and domestic, with a quiet half-tone about it
which was altogether too soothing and assuring to a republican citizen outside the
pale of the court. I afterward begged a piece of the chintz covering as a memento
of the interview and contributed a couple of salmon ffies to the vice-regal outfit.

Then, the interview being formally concluded, I returned to the deck and backed
circumspectly down the gangway to the quay, with pulse in equipoise, and received
the congratulations of my official friends. Subsequently, we all duly arrived at the

70 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

Restigouche by our several routes and conveyances. "Great Caesar's Ghost'' received
the royal guests, and being duly manned and victualed was towed up stream to the
Indian pool with a lounge aboard.

Ah ! what a marvelous series of pools there is from tide-water to the Kedge-
wick, overshadowed for the most part by the high hills which flank the river on both
sides and alternate with long stretches of white water which sparkle in the noontide
sun. The upper river runs off the divide through sixty miles of broad, level forest,
expressing itself in cadences which vary from a murmur to a roar, according to the
pitch of the fall, and receiving a small brook here and a rivulet there until it finally
mingles with the lusty Tom Kedgewick. which is the larger of the two.

It is an exhilirating run for a birch canoe, though somewhat gloomy and monoto-
nous in cloudy weather. But as soon as ever the river becomes expansive with
greater depth and volume and wider bottom the scenery changes rapidly as one
passes along, not only from placid pool to impetuous rapid, and from impinging
crag to sloping shore, but each rapid has its peculiar moods and features, and each
separate landscape some striking point of view.

It was wild enough, too, in those days, with no trace of human habitation for
the entire distance of 120 miles, except old Chane's and Merrill's log shanties, which
were a day's journey apart, until we came to John Mowat's, at Dee Side, now in the
midst of a fashionable quarter.

Once. I remember, when careering down the crests of a rattling rapid, one canoe
came near striking a big bull moose which stood in mid channel to rid itself of flies,
the huge animal not seeming to comprehend the situation of the approaching object
or to have the slightest conception of the rapidly diminishing distance as the birch
swept on. But for an opportune flip of the paddle we should have hit the brute
full in the face !

PRINCESS LOUISE AND HER SALMON.

The sun was off the river when the princess fastened to the big salmon the
evening of her arrival, for the hills were so high as to throw their shadows over
the surface by four o'clock of the longest day of June. The marquis was occupied
upstream and the major below, each with his canoe and Indian guides, and her
highness had the fun all to herself and her gaffer for a full hour before her gentle-
men friends becajne aware that anything momentous was afloat. By that time the
shadows had deepened and the anglers were prepared to reel up for the night. On
arriving at the home pool they found the indomitable heroine standing on the bow
of "Great Caesar's Ghost" with the stock of her salmon rod pointing skyward and
the limber part of it bending over the dark and solemn water in a great big curve,
from the point of which the line ran down into the depths, taut as a fiddle string.
Her canoe was hauled alongside of the scow.

She said the fish had been sulking for fully twenty minutes and seemed deter-
mined to make a night of it. The water was so deep that her gillie couldn't start
him by throwing in stones or prodding at him with the setting pole, and as for
lifting at him with the line one might as well think of trying to raise the dead.
Was it a very large fish? Indian Joe said, "Suppose him big as one canoe!" Had
he showed himself at all? Oh, yes; many times. He had given her ladyship the
liveliest sort of a turn. Was she not fatigued, and would not the marquis spell
her for a while?

But the plucky woman declined to share the honors with her husband and held
on persistently to the rod. Meanwhile the attitude of the principals remained in
status quo.

THE PRINCESS AND THE SALMON. 71

Now, an hour at the butt of a two-handed rod is a pretty severe test of physical
endurance, which few considerate salmon ever impose upon the brawny sex, and
much less upon feeble womanhood, though exceptional occurrences enable English
ladies to "show the mettle of their breeding," and sometimes American ladies, too.
I am proud to say.

HOW IT WAS DONE.

The fact is, the princess had hooked that salmon in a pool a half-mile above the
moorage, where Joe had pointed it out to her on a sunken ledge which the canoe
passed over. Joe was handling the canoe alone, sitting in the stern, sometimes hold-
ing her with the paddle and anon letting her drop down with the current, checking
her as occasion required. With another paddler in the bow the fish would have been
observed sooner. The favoring chance for the angler was on the forward down-
stream cast, but the instant the course overran the fish, perceiving that the oppor-
tunity had passed she caught on to the only alternative and gave her rod a dextrous
backward cast whereupon the fly had no sooner touched the surface of the water
than the fish rose. He was evidently hungry for he came up with a bulge and
threw his whole weight on the line, fastening the hook firmly in the tough gristle
of the jaw, then settled heavily to the bottom, like a log, where he could be plainly
seen lying motionless. Like Bad Dickey in the burlesque, it took him some minutes
to discover that he had been stabbed, but as soon as he did wake up to a realizing
sense of the crisis the circus began. Up and down and across the pool, in the water
and out of the water, into the bank and under the boat, he led that indefatigable
lady a chase and a race until he finally floundered down the main rapids through a
quarter of a mile of rough water into the thirty-acre pool, the canoe following like
an arrow. Here he would seem to have finally exhausted himself in a series of runs,
whirls, gyrations and splashes, and a truce naturally followed. During the wait the
princess was glad to accept a glass of cordial, which she needed much.

Meanwhile the brave lady had been many times out of the canoe and on shore,
and sometimes knee deep in the water, according as better advantage of her captive
could be obtained, and throughout the long ordeal holding her end up heroically and
wielding the supple wand as her august mother wields the scepter, leading her sub-
jects or constraining them by the mild potency of deft handling and gracious finesse.
Only when the salmon made his desperate leaps she would drop the tip deferentially,
preferring a temporary concession to irretrievable loss.

THE FINALE.

And so we came eventually to the concluding act of the drama in the thick of
the gloaming, with the shadows of eventide settling upon the pool, by which time
the great fish was beginning to shake his head omniously and the princess could feel
the tremor of the line. Joe noticed the vibration, too.

"Suppose um take canoe now?" he suggested. Then without awaiting formal
assent he brought the light craft conveniently to her feet and she slipped down
adroitly off the scow, motioning one of the other gillies to follow.

Every one suspected that there would be another tussle after so long a wait,
and so the event proved, for the lady had hardly stepped aboard the canoe before
the salmon made a big break for up stream and reeled off a hundred yards of line
so swiftly that the winch fairly shrieked with the friction. But the mechanical drag
and sag of the line soon checked the spurt, and the lost line was gradually retrieved,
the fish coming in doggedly and disputing every inch. This brilliant run seemed to
be a despairing effort of the captive to get away — a concentrated energy of strength

72 AN ANGLER'S REMLNISCENCES.

and purpose — inasmuch as the devious tactics of the earlier struggle were not re-
newed. Neither did he essay any new expedients.

For the next half hour it was alternately give and take — a succession of short
circuits, an obstinate boring against the current, with occasional spasmodic runs and
broad display of tail, until at last it became difficult to see the shore or even the
position of the fish. However, there was plenty of elbow room, and the canoe had
only to follow its caprices and erratic courses, the two canoemen plying their paddles
" vigorously whenever he unexpectedly quickened his pace. Thus the struggle was
narrowed down to a mere question of the survival of the toughest, subject all the
time to mischances and errors of judgment.

At length, it may be stated, the party aboard the scow became anxious as well
as hungry, for the royal angler made no sign, and in despair of a finish the marquis
and his secretary took skiff for the opposite shore, where a group of dusky figures
could be barely discerned, arriving just in time to see an uplifted rod swing heavily
back toward the wooded bank, and to catch a glimpse of a pallid gleam beside the
river's bank and the boil of an upward surge. Then almost instantly followed a
sharp dip and a splash and a simultaneous sigh of relief. There was a flip-flap on
the grass, and the noblest quarry that was ever landed by royal skill lay gasping
and quivering in their midst.

"Bravely done !" they murmured all, with suppressed enthusiasm.

Then the considerate marquis attended his exhausted and supperless wife to
her apartments on the scow, and in due time that mighty salmon was laid out in
state, with the hook and leader still hanging to its jaw, and so was sent home to
England as a present to her majesty the queen, and an enviable trophy from her
loving daughter and royal highness, the Princess Louise.

FORT GEORGE ISLAND HOTEL,
Two miles from Pilot Town, Mouth St. John's River.

CHAPTER XIV

TROUTING ON LONG ISLAND — OPENING OF THE SEASON.

On Long Island the first day of March has long been regarded by the sport-
ing fraternity as the opening day of the trouting season. The temperature is
warmer there than in the interior, and the snow-water runs out from the streams
nearly a month earlier. The fish are in good condition, active, constantly on the
lookout, and supposed to be eager to retaste the remembered pleasures of last
year's fly-time.

The piscatorial experts and professional fly fishers of New York seem to
regard it as important that this season should be opened in due form as the bishop
does that the church should be. formally consecrated. They also deem it incumbent
upon themselves to be present to wet the first line, just as fashionable young ladies
must wear the first bonnet of the new style. Accordingly, on this momentous first
of March (or rather, the day before), the afternoon train of the Long Island Rail-
road is almost monopolized by sporting gentry in full panoply of approved jacket
and capacious boots, and armed with rods, creels and mysterious leather cases and
bags of divers shapes and sizes.

A FISHING PARTY.

They are generally men of middle age, of the rotund' and jolly pattern, ventri-
potential, who crack loud jokes and laugh from the depths of the stomach. Those
with the ruddiest noses and smoothest faces are generally addressed familiarly as
"judge;" others, heavily bearded, are ostensibly dubbed "general'' or "colonel" by
the younger and less distinguished of the party, who have no titles to the universal
admiration and nudging approval of the country people in the car. However, on
such occasions the distinctions of caste are all obliterated by the wicked flasks that
equalize and level.

This sporting party is of goodly and genteel material. It has this reputation.
It is the aristocratic cream of the universal community of sportsmen. Many of
them are strangers to each other, inasmuch as they belong to different "clubs" that
are scattered along the whole Atlantic coast of the island. These clubs vary in
their number of members from a half dozen to four-score, paying for special
fishing privileges in private ponds and premises. There are no localities where the
public can fish indiscriminately and without restraint, except upon the spongy
marshes where the salt tide-water flows into the creeks ; and even here goodly fares
of trout have been taken by inexperts. Some of the ponds are owned by wealthy
retired merchants, and accessible only to a few particular friends. Others, not so
well stocked, are the property of small farmers who are but too well pleased at
the opportunity of profit from the leasing of the fishing privileges.

These few facts being ascertained, it is easily explained why, as the railway
train goes on its journey, parties of two and three or half a dozen get out from
time to time at the succeeding stations. These invariably find wagons in waiting,
and are immediately rattled off to the seaboard over four miles of barrens.

The party in present interest consisted of four persons. Four is an agreeable
number; it makes a table at whist, a quartet in music, and a party to a duel. The
biggest man, corporeally, was a skillful wirepuller of wide reputation in the pisca-

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TROUTING ON LONG ISLAND. 75

torial circle — a man of ''infinite jest" and unbounded stomach, into whose mediter-
ranean mouth good things perpetually flowed, and out of which better came. There
is a classical dignity, a patronizing air about his fashion of whipping in a trout that
would make the earliest of gudgeons gracefully acknowledge the compliment of
being caught by him. The second in order was a thin, wiry fellow — a sort of
piscatory assassin, a professional dealer in treasons, strategems and spoils, and a
doctrinal believer in the efficacy of immense boots for beguiling trout. There are
some fishermen who would consider boots that came to their hips indispensable,
even if they were going to fish in the dry bed of a stream. The third resembled
a certain celebrated member of an ancient party that included several fishermen,
inasmuch as he had an eye to the wants of others and bore the provender bag for
them. The fourth was the subscriber, of whom the less said the better.

GOING TO THE FISHING GROUNDS.

You should have seen this lively quartet as it gathered at the depot on the
afternoon preceding that Friday, 1st of March — unlucky day, but suggestive of
fish nevertheless. There was no trace of undue excitement upon their faces. One
would scarcely have suspected that a weight of cares rested upon their shoulders
and that their next day's happiness depended upon the solution of muddy geomet-
rical problems and juxtaposition of lines, angles and punts. What Ji convenient
affair a railroad is ! New Yorkers would hardly think of going down Long
Island for trout, except for the railroad. Naj', as for time and distance, it might
be said that one can almost sit in his chamber at Brooklyn and fish in the ponds
at Islip, sixty miles away. So we have hardly taken our seat in the cars, selected

our flies, wet our whistles and smoked before we are set down at , where

Brock's team is in waiting, according to program. If you ever wish to go fishing,
arrange with this same Brock the day before, and he will hold himself in readiness
to take you over the barrens to the fishing grounds, as he did us. Only I hope it
won't rain as it did on that unlucky occasion, and I trust you may have a spring
wagon, so that betwixt the agueish chills of the atmosphere and the jolting over
the scrub oak roots in the roads, you won't rattle all the gold filling out of your
teeth at once. The torture was brief, however, for the horses made up in speed
what they lacked in comeliness, and away we clattered, until luggage, fishing-rods,
horse blankets, baskets, seats and passengers were well shaken into a heap over
the forward axle.

In this mixed condition we were suddenly rounded to (as the sailors say) be-
fore the door of a goodly farmhouse, with a whirl that whisked the mud over the
outer wheels, and had the good fortune to reach its protecting porch just as the
soggy clouds had squeezed out their last drop of rain. As we unbundled. Uncle
Sam Ketcham waved his hand hospitably at the door, while his bashful daughter
Susan (we learned that her name was Susan afterwards) welcomed us with her
sunniest smile from behind the old man's shoulder, like a ray of sunrise gleaming
over a hill. A good old matron in silver-bowed spectacles and cap asked if we
were wet, and our fat friend answered dismally for the party that we were very
"dry." Then we hastily shook the kinks out of our legs, and after a "hands all
round" bestowed ourselves for the evening.

A TROUT BRE.\KFAST.

Early in the misty, musty morning following the war-cry was sounded, and
the party vaulted the nearest fence for a two hours' angling before breakfast.
Uncle Sam, with an attendant carrying oars, led the way to the pond. The signs

76 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

did not look promising for fly-fishing. However, after persistent lashing of the
surface, sufficient trout were taken to give a taste all around ; then we returned.
A grateful odor soon arose from the frying-pan, and the cloth was laid. If the
early exercise had not made us ravenous, the clean linen and the luscious comes-
tibles that steamed upon the table, prepared by Susan's own skillful hand, would
of themselves have provoked an appetite. Ah ! Messrs. Editors, if you would have
trout cooked as trout should be; if you would have them done to a turn; if you
would have them broiled, baked, fried crisp and brown, done in bread crumbs, or
served in any other style that tickles the palate or provokes the appetite; if you
would have the delicious fish unfolded in rich pink flakes like the petals of a blush
rose, which, dexterously lifted with your knife-point, reveals the trout's backbone
as white and shining as the pearly teeth of an Indian princess; then, oh then, go
to Susan! I know not what her other qualifications may be. She is good looking,
certainly. She is attentive to your wants, and obliging. She may make a capital
wife for some wayfaring sportsman. But if she have none of the attributes which
go to make man blessed, she can at least cook trout. If you wish just such a fine
mess of trout, Mr. Editor, just drop them (the trout) a line, as I have done, and
if you don't receive an answer, prompt and decisive, you deserve to be beaten with
your own rod.

TROUT FISHING.

After breakfast the piscatorial assassin in big boots wished to try his luck in
the stream that formed the outlet of the pond; so the party was divided, we two
choosing the stream and the others the boats.. It was not one of those streams
that go laughing and rippling under branches of trees, gurgling through grassy
meadows, eddying around huge prone logs, and inurmuring under the alders ; but
it would a somewhat sluggish and tortuous coarse through the brown and sloppy
mud flats to the ocean. There is a great deal in the surroundings and associations
that make trout fishing exciting and fascinating. To cast your eye ovtr the brink
and watch your fly as it dances on the edge of a silvery ripple; to catch the sharp
gleam of light just beneath, and feel a sharp tug on the instant thrill through
the veins like the spark from a galvanic battery ; to experience the peculiar sensa-
tion of that electric current as it flashes along your spine to the toes ; this is the
ecstacy — the primary delight of trout fishing.

Next comes the sport (if the fish be a large one) of leading him tenderly
through all the intricate windings and avenues of his expiring agony, until you
have landed him drowned safely in your creel. I cannot swear, Mr. Editor, that
the trout feels precisely the same delights in the same degree, that you — I mean that
anglers — do, but he has doubtless some feeling in the matter. If it is not pain he
feels he certainly shows every symptom of astonishment, to say the least. Then
he invariably gives a dying struggle or two in the basket at your side by way of
admonition — you can hardly determine whether it be a twinge, of conscience or an-
other bite at the end of your line. If undubitably the latter, conscience is instantly
unheeded, and you address all your faculties to the task of filling your creel and
killing the biggest fish.

Whatever my friend of the capacious boots may think, I do not call it sport
to stand in ice water up to one's hips and grow blue and numb with cold, while
we beat the surface with the regular swing of a pendulum, scarcely tempting a
single rise. Once I struck a fine large fish, and for a few moments enjoyed him
well. He was an active fellow, and for a while it seemed a draw game between
us. At last I had him alongside and passive, as I believed. The bank was steep,

TROUTING ON LONG ISLAND. 77

and, as I had no landing net, I brought him to the edge and carefully passed my
thumb and finger down the gut to seize his gill. The chances were even then.
It was a mere flip of a copper between us; but just as I thought I had him he
"turned tail," and I lost. Disgusted, I drew my chilled limbs up the bank and
returned to warm fire and hot toddy at the house. After a while I returned to the
scene of action again. The others had come down from the pond to ascertain
Boots' luck. Boots was still intent on piscatory pursuits, standing deep in the ice-
water. No wonder he went home with a cold ! He had taken a half dozen. The
fat member I found snugly ensconced in an adjacent cock of salt hay, philo-
sophically smoking. The other I could not see, but I heard him hooting forth
some doleful salutations as a signal of recall to a late dinner.

Limited space forbids any further details of personal adventure. Those who
kept sacred the opening day of the season in different localities met varying success,
but poor at the best. There was a general jollification all around within doors.
This was pleasant. But if I wished for fullness of enjoyment in trout fishing, I
should hereafter select some other day than the first of March.

X'OTE. — The foregoing chapter was written by Mr. Hallock in 1S67, and gives a fine pen
picture of trouting on old Long Island nearly fifty years ago. — Editor.

CHAPTER XV.

AMERICAN ANGLING LITERATURE.

The history of angling literature in America is not difficult to trace for one
who has clasped hands with those who were sponsers at its christening, and has
had the good fortune to know personally almost every author of note since the
era of angling books began; but to do full justice to each one, and to apportion
to each the part he has borne, and the good he has done, is a difficult task, likely
to become invidious. There are many exceedingly valuable contributors to the
general fund of information in the several departments of ichthyology, who do
not appear as authors, and there are comparatively few authors who write on
the basis of their own personal observations and experience, trusting rather to
the statements of accepted authorities to insure accuracy for their publications,
and give them the requisite backbone. My preference would be not to laud the
popular author so much as to designate such as have been able to contribute any^
thing at all to the sum total of knowledge, and to an intelligent comprehension of
the fishes of the country. There was a time when a printed volume was the
emanation or expression of a mind which was master of its subject, and its
opinions were entitled to respect as those of one speaking by authority, and not
as the scribes ; but, nowadays, well — as Joel Penman pertinently remarks, "Any
fule kin rite a buke !"

There is no end to the literature of angling. One is amazed at its redund-
ancy. Everyone who goes a-fishing must needs tell of it in the sporting papers,
if not in more pretentious publications. Their manifold collective utterances are
like the chattering of blackbirds in spring, joyful but vapid; yet they include a
fair proportion of monographs and random field notes, which, in the aggregate,
form an exceedingly valuable compendium of ichthyological research. Much of
this class of materials has been already collated and compiled by the coUaboraters
of the Smithsonian Institution into several illustrated quarto volumes, entitled
"Fisheries Industries of the United States." The full statistics of the past having
been brought down to date, and the work thoroughly systematized, it will be
prosecuted to the end of time, as long as fish swim and Congressional appropria-
tions can be voted for collection and printing. The steps progressive toward the
ultimate accomplishment may be partially outlined in the brief synopsis which
follows.

In earliest Colonial times, the reports sent to the Home Governments from
New England, Virginia, and Florida included a fair description or enumeration
of the ichthyofauna of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts ; and, as the population grad-
ually spread towards the Ohio river and the Great Lakes, interest was continually
kept alive by the multiplying forms which were discovered. Angling was some-
times practised by gentlemen of leisure, as we discover from a musty little volume
printed in Philadelphia in 1830, and most interesting it is, too — which gives the
"Memoirs of the Schuylkill Fishing Club" from 1732 to 1830. Such a diary,
extending over a period of nearly one hundred years, must be without a parallel
in any land. The subsequent occupation and development of the country opened
out an immense and abounding field for the angler and his inseparable associates,

(78)

AMERICAN ANGLING LITERATURE. 79

the commercial fishermen and the naturalist— a fact which Englishmen, who are
always loremost in such matters, were not slow to discover and avail themselves
of. British officers stationed in the provinces were able to enjoy exclusively the
delights of the Canadian salmon streams for half a century at least before the
unsophisticated settlers or their neighbors in the States were even aware of their
existence. Quietly they tossed the "Kippurns," or what-not, into the sequestered
pools of a primitive wilderness, and were not envied or disturbed, because, for-
sooth, their sports were not appreciated or understood. This anomaly of tastes
and pastimes can be explained. Up to forty years ago Americans were too busy
to wile away time in fishing. They had not accumulated the "piles" which now
make millionaires as plenty as blackberries ; indeed, they hardly knew a salmon or
trout by sight. If they wanted sport, they naturally turned to hunting. The
gun and the chase were incidental to their everyday associations and employ-
ment of subduing the forest and driving pioneer stakes. And so it happened in
respect to the primitive literature of this new country, that many topical books
appeared on the dog, gun, and saddle, bear hunting, trapping, buffalo running,
Indian fighting, and the like, but none at all on angling.

Once in a while a contemplative author like Thoreau, sauntering by the river
side, or Willis, from "Under a Bridge," or Prime in "Owl Creek Cabin Letters,"
or Ik Marvel, wrapt in "Reveries," would lead us unsuspectingly into secluded
by-paths of the forest, discanting piously upon the silvery denizens of the brooks
in a fashion to prompt an occasional vacation rambler to go a-fishing. But these
new men {novi homines) in the days of their novitiate, never aspired to higher
game than the "trout in speckled pride." The way in which they held him up
to tender recognition might make a sentimental person wish to fondle, but never
to skin and eat him. Prime, good master, was adolescent then and callow, but
he was a born angler, well versed in the mysteries of the brooks ; and, as soon as
ever his heart was hardened and he ceased to regard the beautiful things as pets,
he began to write bravely of kidnapping them from their fluvial home and "play-
ing them scientifically." and so has continued to write for forty years, though he
has never risen to the higher plane of the salmon. I suppose that the undisputed
pioneer of American Anglishing Literature, pure and undefiled, is Charles Lanman,
who came as one crying in the wilderness, as early as 1848, when he printed (in
London) his "Adventures of a Salmon Angler in Canada." The same book was
issued contemporaneously in America as a "Tour of the Saguenay." His sub-
sequent wanderings by lake and river were woven into a double octavo volume
of most entertaining sketches, under the title of "Adventures in the Wilds of
America," printed in 1856. He has no peer among his countrymen. Surely it
was no kid-glove excursion to go salmon fishing here before the era of railroads,
clubs, culexifuge, and all that, though the chap who daintily airs his latter day
experience seems as much of a "feller" as the man who took it in the rough before
the lad was born. No doubt the memory of the Rev. John Todd has passed away
with his corporeal taking-ofif, yet he was a companion of Audubon, and wrote
"Long Lake" in 1850, a volume which embodied the first oracular utterances
from the Adirondack Woods. And there was the Rev. Dr. Bethune, who edited
a volume of Walton in 1848, or thereabouts ; he knew the intricacies of the Maine
forests and the haunts of the mysterious land-locked salmon for forty years before
the scientists determined what it was. It seems but yesterday since I knew them
all — indeed, Lanman and Prime are still living and hearty.

Although I write of pastime, I would not detract one iota from the meed of

80 AX ANGLER'S REMIXISCENCES.

praise which belongs to those progressive men in the early decades of the present
century, who blazed a warpath into the fallow field of New World ichthyic science.
There were Lewis and Clark, partners in exploration beyond the Rockies, who
discovered the mountain trout and whitefish in 1809; Rafinesque, whose synoptical
report of the "Fishes of the Ohio River and Its Tributaries," printed in 1820, was
the first American publication in the interest of ichthyology; Dr. Kirtland, who
followed with his "Fishes of the Ohio," in 1828 ; Professor Edward Hitchcock,
on "Massachusetts Fishes," in 1835 ; Storer, on the "Ichthyology of Massachusetts,"
in 1839; Agassiz, on the "Embryology of the Salmon," in 1842; DeKay, on
"Fishes of New York," admirably illustrated with plates, in 1842 ; Storer, on
"Fishes of North America," in 1846, an ambitious, but really comprehensive,
work; and, finally, a general treatise on "Fish Culture," by Theodatus Garlick,
in .1848. These admirable text-books furnished a sufficient groundwork for
intelligent prosecution of the study, and no doubt stimulated the pursuit of
angling, for thenceforward angling books appeared in gradually increasing num-
bers, the field broadening as the area of the country extended. English publica-
tions, which had hitherto served as the angler's vade mecum, began to be dis-
carded, or they were revamped and adapted to what gradually came to be dis-
covered as American wants and American ideas. Such were Smith's "Observa-
tions on Angling," printed in 1833; the "American Angler's Guide," printed in
1846; Bethune's "Walton," in 1848; and Frank Forester's "Fish and Fishing,"
ill 1849. The first strictly indigenous native American bbok was John G. Brown's
".Angler's Gu'de," which appeared in 1849. It marked a new era. But Brown
was only a poor tackle maker, without classical education or social position, and
how should he be expected to know anything? The critics rated him unmerci-
fully. Nevertheless, his was a very complete and trustworthy guide to salt and
fresh water fishing for the time, and well illustrated. Yet we are surprised to
note its deficiencies. There is not a word about Canadian salmon, or grayling,
or striped bass, or the fifty other principal kinds of fish which afford sport now.
Fly fishing itself was then a new art. Up to 1845 it was scarcely known, and
little practiced. Americans never knew how to fish for salmon until 1850.
Lanman was the only angler among them who had been initiated, and he was
not proficient. A meagre twelve lines on page eighty is all that Frank Forester
devotes to salmon in America, and Forester was tliouglit to be an advanced writer.

I have said that Englishmen were foremost to discover the unusual attrac-
tions of our virgin salmon streams. So also they were the first to divulge them
to the world in books. One by one those who had fished began to reveal the
secrets of the primeval penetralia into which they had ventured years before.
"Chiploquorgan," by Capt. Dashwood, and "Forest Life in Acadia," by Capt.
Hardy, both British officers, printed in 1858, are incomparable sketches of scenes
which no hearth rug knight of the quill would dare attempt to portray. "L'Acadie,"
a London book printed in 1849, is a delightful idyl of the Canadian woods.
Latrobe's "Rambles in North America" (1835) contains something about fishing.
Though of materials essentially American, these books were English in sentiment
and emotion. They lack the amour propre of one who "treads his native heath."
Long we have waited for such a book, but I doubt if it has ever yet been written.

In 1850 the indefatigable Storer, of Massachusetts, wrote up the "Fishes of
Nova Scotia and Labrador." Dr. Gilpin, Matthew Jones, of Halifax, U. S., and
Rev. M. Harvey, of Newfoundland, were also industrious pamphleteers. In
1862 Girard published his "Fresh Water Fishes of North America." In 1855 the

AMERICAN ANGLING LITERATURE. 81

ichthyology of the northwest was fairly covered by Dr. Suckley, U. S. A., in th^
"Pacific Railroad Reports." Moses Parley printed his "Fisheries of New Bruns-
wick'' in 1862. In the same year Holbrook's ambitious work on the "Fishes of
South Carolina" appeared — a large quarto, with colored portraits of the fishes
described. The civil war broke out before the work was finshed, and the sub-
sequent death of the author precluded its continuance. In 1866 Lord's "Naturalist
in British Columbia" was published. Other books, of more or less interest to the
angler, appeared from time to time, but none of special value. Nothing like a
comprehensive manual was published until 1864, when Roosevelt's "Game Fish
of the North" came out. That was during the year of the first lease of a
Canadian salmon river, the Nepissiguit, and the book made special reference to
that famous stream in its chapter on salmon fishing, itself a new revelation to
the fraternity of fishermen. How to fish for salmon, and the implements to be
used, and a description of the sport, had never been presented before. The
volume was a godsend to anglers, for it included the technology of angling, fly-
fishing, tackle-making, entomology, fish culture, camping out, etc. It described
new^ devices, new methods, and new fields of sp^ort, which had come into use
during the sixteen years that had intervened since the enterprising Browne had
prepared his "Angler's Guide." Moreover, it introduced new species of fishes,
not previously regarded for sport, and identified others which had been in doubt.
The whole subject was in chaos at that time, scientifically consideired. Experts
had not even quite determined whether a brook trout and a samlet (parr) were
the same, or that brook trout were not, in fact, immature salmon. The world
has moved since then.

In 1865. the year following, Roosevelt put out a supplementary book, entitled
"Superior Fishing," relating chiefly to the fishes of the Great Lakes, and touching
the lately mooted subject of fish protection. The two books together covered
the common brook trout, the sea trout, the salmon, landlocked salmon, the
coregoni group, the common carp, the mascalonge, pickerel, and great northern
pike (now known as the Mississippi mascalonge, in distinction from the masca-
longe of the St. Lawrence system), the two then scarcely recognized varieties of
black bass, the rock bass, yellow perch, pike perch or wall-eye, the great lake trout
(namaycush), lake trout, and siscowet, all of them fresh-water fish; and the blue
fish, striped bass, Spanish mackerel, and snapping mackerel (which has since been
identified as a young bluefish). all salt-water fish — twenty-one varieties all told.
The same year "Uncle" Thad Norris produced his "American Angler's Book," a
magnificent illustrated octavo of 700 pages (distinctively American, and no
mistaking its type), of the same general character and scope as Mr. Roosevelt's
dual publication, and including descriptions of some fifty varieties of fishes, of
which sixteen were salt-water forms ; but with the disadvantage of being not
always accurate. The author was somewhat "mixed'' in his ichthyology, and
liable to describe without having seen. His carelessness in these respects drew
upon himself the gentle reprehension of certain professional Canadians, which
he had the good sense to receive graciously, and print in an appendix to later
editions. For the most part, however, the book can be relied on, and is service-
able. In 1869, Genio C. Scott, an e.xpert in trout and striped bass fishing, printed
a copiously illustrated octavo volume, entitled "Fishing in American Waters,"
which is open to the same objections as Norris's Book, only more so. He
devoted large space to salt-water fish, with many of which he was well ac-
quainted, and would have made a first-class book had he not prospected beyond

82 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

his depth. By this time, too, science had made considerable progress, so that
his errors became the more glaring. The praiseworthy quality about Roosevelt
is that he seldom makes mistakes.

The same year Mr. Allerton described the monster trout of Maine, which
have been caught of 18-pound weight, in a very creditable book with the rather
general title of "Brook Trout Fishing." There were other readable books of
the generic type, some of them having high literary merit (Dawson's "Pleasures
of Angling" being one of them, and Dr. Updegraff's "Bodines" another), but
whose specific value consisted in the acquaintance they made with new resorts,
such as the Adirondacks (Headley, 1856), the White Mountains (Prime, 1867),
the Delaware- Waters (Krider, 1853), the Blue Ridge of Virginia (Strother,
1856), the Magog District of Canada (1867), the Upper Mississippi (Oliver
Gibbs, 1869), and Carolina Sports (Elliott). Bertram's "Harvest of the Sea"
(1866) was valuable to naturalists, containing much new information about
Florida fishes. By the close of the decade fish culture attracted increased atten-
tion, and we therefore note sundry books on that subject, to wit: "Artificial Fish
Breeding," by Fry (1866) ; "Fish Culture for Shad, Salmon, etc." (1868) ; "Direc-
tions for Raising Trout" (Stone, 1868), "Domesticated Trout' (1872), by the
same author; and "Trout Culture," by Slack (1872). Perhaps a full bibliography
of American books to the date last named will assist the collector and interest
the reader, in spite of the partial recapitulation, and I therefore venture to
interpolate it here as a sort of relay house on our historical tour. I claim it as
the most perfect list yet printed :

Rafinesque — Ohio River and Tributaries... 1820 Wet Days at Edgewood, G. K. Marvel 1855

Fishes of Ohio, Kirtland 1828 Virginia Illustrated, Strother 1856

Memoirs of Schuylkill Fishing Club from Adirondacks. Headley 1856

1732 to 1830 1830 Frank Forester's Manual 1857

Observations on Angling, Smith 1833 Hudson Bay, or Every-day Life in the

Massachusetts Fishes. Hitchcock 1835 Wilds of North America 1858

Rambles in North America, Latrobe 1S35 St. Lawrence and Its Tributaries, Hattle.. 1859

Ichthyology of Massachusetts, Storer 1839 Carolina Sports, Elliott 1859

Embroyology of the Salmon, Agassiz 1842 Salmon Fishing in Canada, Hamilton 1860

Fishes of New York, De Kay 1842 Fisheries of New Brunswick, Perley 1862

American Angler's Guide, Brown 1846 Fishes of South Carolina, Holbrook 1862

Fishes of North America, Storer 1846 Game Fish of the North, Roosevelt 1864

Walton^Bethune 1848 Arcadia (Northern New York) 1864

Fish Culture, Garlick 1848 American Angler's Book, Norris 1865

Adventures of an Angler in Canada; Tour Shooting and Fishing, Revoil 1865

of the Saguenay, Lanman 1848 Superior Fishing, Roosevelt 1865

Owl Creek Cabin Letters, Prime 1848 Naturalist in British Columbia, Lord 1866

L'Acadie (London) 1849 Artificial Fish Breeding, Fry 1866

Fish and Fishing, Forester 1849 Later Years' Fishing, Prime 1867

.American Angler's Guide. J. J. Brown.. . . 1849 Magog District 1867

American Sportsman, Lewis 1850 Hints to Anglers, Bell 1868

Fisher's Manual for the United States 1850 Random Casts 1868

Long Lake. Todd 1850 Adirondacks, Murray 1868

With Hook and Line, Forester 1851 Directions for Raising Trout, Stone 1868

Fresh- Water Fishes of North America, Lake Pepin Fish Chowder, Gibbs 1869

Girard 1852 Rrook Trout Fishing, Allerton 1869

Old House by the River, Prime 1853 I'ishing in American Waters, Scott 1869

Sporting Anecdotes, Klapp-Krider 1853 Forest Life in Acadie, Hardy 1869

Blackwater Chronicle, Strother 1853 Chiploquorgan, Dashwood ^.. 1871

Hills, Lakes and Streams, Hammond 1854 Trout Culture, Slack 1872

Pacific R. R. Reports, Suckley 1855 Domesticated Trout. Stone 1873

Hallock's "Fishing Tourist" appeared in 1873. It was chiefly a record of
personal observation and travel, which covered all the trout and salmon waters
of the Continent, including the Pacific Coast. It introduced the Michigan gray-
ling, which thenceforward became such a popular game fish that it was well

AMERICAN ANGLING LITERATURE. 83

nigh exterminated in the course of the succeeding ten years. In 1877 the same
author, being editor of Forest and Stream at the time, printed the "Sportsman's
Gazetteer," a volume of 900 pages, which became at once the standard reference
book of American sportsmen. It was strictly an encyclopedia. It described and
classified some three hundred varieties of salt and fresh-water fishes, giving their
local names and synonyms, the first attempt ever made in a popular work. It
included also a copious glossary of sporting terms, and a complete directory to
all the sporting localities in each state, territory, and Canadian Province, by
townships and counties, even to far off Alaska — a region whose ichthyology has
since been treated at length by the same author in "Our New Alaska." The
"Sportsman's Gazetteer" made the first classification of Pacific coast fishes, the
same having been revised and verified by Professor Gill, whose scientific work
plays such important part in advanced ichthyology. In 1878 Professor Gordan
issued his "Manual of Vertebrates," a comprehensive and much needed work,
fully up to the times. Ferguson's "Fishes of Maryland," and the annual reports
of the thirty or more state fish commissioners, formed important accessions to
the rapidly accumulating knowledge on fish subjects. Henshall's "Book of the
Black Bass" (1881) was a special monography of great value. "Sport with the
Rod and Gun" (1883) is deserving of mention as an elegant collocation of
sketches, which combine vivid style with practical information. In the technology
of angling four books have appeared during the past three years, which are quite
thorough and comprehensive, and altogether indispensable to the practical
angler. "Fishing with the Fly" (Orvis-Cheney, 1886) is illustrated with colored
lithographs of salmon, bass, and trout flies, in no less than 143 popular and
approved patterns. "Fly Rods and Tackle" (Wells, 1885) is a thoroughly
American book of instruction, covering the entire field of angling mechanics in a
masterful way, with drawings, diagrams, and demonstrations of perfunctory
problems. The author is somewhat theoretical, and consequently dogmatic and
arbitrary, a disposition which is made especially manifest in his more pretentious
but less reliable book, "The American Salmon Angler." Old anglers accept as
much of it as they can approve, and quietly reject the balance. A more
thorough paced book, as a horseman might term it, is Keene's "Fishing Tackle"
(1886). The author is an Englishman, resident in the United States, but equally
at home in both countries, and altogether dispassionate and unprejudiced. He
seems to have the happy faculty of a wise discrimination and judicious selection,
rejecting whatever is bad in this or the other, and striving to combine hold fast,
and recommend that which is good. "Fly-fishing and Fly-making" (1887), by
the same author, is a sensible bok, which will suit the anglers of the old school.
It endorses tried and approved methods, and is cautious of innovations. One
very remarkable production, most creditable to its compiler, and certainly falling
within the scope of legitimate angling literature, is the latest catalogue issued
by Messrs. Abbey and Imrie, of New York, which contains some 1,500 illustra-
tions, covering the entire range of angling outfits. Such an inimitable pictorial
exposition is most useful in objective instruction, and ought to be catalogued
in every angling library.

Included in miscellaneous angling literature are the copious and unremitting
contributions to the weekly sporting papers, of which a single one, the American
Angler, is devoted exclusively to fish and fishing. The redundancy of such
material is amazing. It constitutes a sort of indispensable remplissage for om-

84 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

nivorous demand, but its value is uncertain. "X" represents both its quantity
and quality. An attempt to mention every writer of merit who has scratched
his name with a fishbone on the illusive sand would make one tired; yet there is
an indefatigable collector, Professor G. Brown Goodfe, the well-known chief of
the U. S. National Museum, who has been compiling a bibliography of American
ichthyology for the past ten years ( !) and, although the product increases faster
than he can garner, he hopes some day to corral the entire lot. His collocation
will bring out prominently the names of noteworthy pioneers who are inseparable
from early efforts, like Seth Green, Mather, Milner, Ainsworth, Hessel, Barnet
Phillips, S. C. Clarke, Redding, Atkins, Brackett, Hudson, and a host of others,
as well as the busy and more enlightened systematic workers of the present day
like Bean, McDonald, Bendire, Earll, Ingersoll, Allen, True, et al. to the end of
the long and distinguished list.

"Zoology of the Northwest" (1878), prepared by Lieut. Wheeler, is the title
of the first of those ponderous volumes prepared under the auspices of the gov-
ernment, and now being issued from year to year, which are to render the labor
of the future reviewer a pleasing task. It is an illustrated quarto, covering
ground in part which had been imperfectly investigated by Dr. Suckley in 1855.
Gill's "Bibliography of Fishes" (1882), and his "Arrangement of Fishes" (1883)
are scientifically important, and so is Jordan and Gilbert's "Synopsis of the
Fishes of North America," which gives the nomenclature and descriptions of all
known species of fishes north of the boundary between the United States and
Mexico. It has a compass of 1,018 pages, and describes 23 orders, 173 families,
487 genera, 1,340 species, and over two thousand varieties of American fishes.
Justly collossal, it stands like a mighty monolith at the very vestibule of the
majestic Temple of Ichthus which is gradually taking form and dimension
through the combined efforts of trained artificers and master workmen operating
under the skillful direction of U. S. Fish Commissioner Baird.

This book of Jordan's is illustrative of a new era. It forms a preliminary
part of the great cumulative work which it foreshadows and may perpetuate,
and of Avhich such elaborations as Goode's "Fishing Industries of the United
States," illustrated with hundreds of plates, and the pioneer merely of a forth-
coming series, and the annual "Bulletins of the U. S. Fishery Commission," and
Baird's "Pacific Railroad Reports" and the "Fishes of the Eastern Coast of the
United States from Greenland to Georgia," already stand out in conspicious pro-
portions. Henceforth, the philology of angling is relegated to the poets, of whom
the venerable Isaac McLellan, now living, and still singing at the age of eighty-
three, is almost the sole American representative. He and "Nessmuk" may
chant their "Forest Runes" together in the porch of the Temple, and dillettante
authors hang their garlands on the horns of its high altar, but science will
henceforth be the reigning god and all the ichthic offerings be made to him
alone. Knowledge is everything. . No angler may catch a fish without a Latin
name, and all the arts, appliances, and methods of fishing will be contrived to
that end. Nature and science will plod perpetually hand in hand over the classic
boulevard, pari passu, trained to equal steps, while high upon the architrave,
over the porch, appears in bold relief the cabalistic legend, alike suggestive of
the impulse and incentive. Pisces in hoc signo vinces.

A continuation of the angling bibliography may here appropriately follow,
concluding what has been begun.

AMERICAN ANGLING LITERATURE.

8a

Fishing Tourist, Ilallock 1873

I Go a Fishing. Prime 1874

Camp Life in Florida, Hallock 1876

Fishes of Maryland, Ferguson 1876

Fish Hatching and Fish Catching, by Roose-
velt and Seth Green 1876

Adirondacks, Wallace 1876

Richardson and Rangeley Lakes, Farrar. . . 1876

Pleasures of Angling, Dawson 1876

Fur, Fin and Feather 1872-6

Sportsman's Gazetteer. Hallock 1877

Vacation Rambles in Michigan, Hallock.. . . 1877

Whitney's Pathfinder (Florida) 1877

Adirondack Tales. Murray 1877

Northern Michigan, Leet 1878

On the Ebb. Hotchkiss 1878

.Adirondack Wilderness, Warner 1878

How to Camp Out, Gould 1878

Moosehead Lake, Farrar 1878

Shooting, Boating and Fishing, Warren... 1878

Canoe and Camera, Steele 1878

Canoeing in Kanuckia, Habberton 1878

Manual of Vertebrates. Jordan 1878

Trout Culture, Seth Green 1878

Zoology of the Northwest. Wheeler 1878

Voyage of the Paper Canoe, Bishop 1878

Four Months in a Sneak Box, Bishop 1879

Flirtation Camp, Van Dyke (California) . . . 1881

Book of the Black Bass, Henshall 1881

Bibliography of Fishes, Gill 1882

Arrangement of Fishes, Gill 1883

Sport with Rod and Gun 1883

Fish, Prouty 1883

Foster's Scientific Angler, Harris 1883

Pacific R. R. Reports, Baird 1883

Fishes of the Eastern Coast, from Green-
land to Georgia 1883

Synopsis of Fishes, Jordan 1883

Bodines. Dr. Updegraff 1883

Fishery Industries of the United States,.

Goode 1884

Camping and Cruising in Florida, Henshall. . 1884

Woods and Lakes of Maine, Hubbard 1884

Fly Fishing in Maine, Stevens 1884

Rod and Line in Colorado, France 1884

Menhaden, Goode 1885

Fly Rods and Fly Tackle, Wells 1885

Angler's Guide, Harris 1885

Bulletin of United States Fish Commission 1871-87

American Salmon Fisher. Wells 1886

Our New Alaska, Hallock - 1886

Fishihg with the Fly, Orvis-Cheney 1886

Fishing on the Brule, King (Wisconsin) . . . 1886

Fishing Tackle, Keene 1886

Fly Fishing and Fly Making, Keene 1887

Forest Runes, Nessmuk 1887

Fishes of Georgia, etc., Jordan 1887

In contemplating the varied brilliancy of the stars, I sometimes see a luminary
cross the field of vision which is nearer and brighter than all the rest. It leavies
a train of glory in its transit, which seems for the moment to eclipse all bright-
ness, and while it blazes it excites the admiration of stolid gazers who are wont
to regard the steadfast planets without emotion. Occasionally these asteriods
occur in bewildering showers, so that all the firmament seems filled with scintilla-
tions of unwonted genius, and modest mortals hide their diminished heads. Then
their light abruptly goes out, and the fi.xed white orbs gleam steadily as before.
And so it is with books. The moral applies : Fame is a headstrong jade, and fickle.
—London Field, July 11, 1887.

CHAPTER XVI.

A JUNE RISE ON THE GODBOUT.

Hon. Allan Gilmour, Scotchman, the hospitable laird of the Godbout river
in lower Canada, who for thirty years has almost annually whipped its creamy
waters for salmon, is dead. Let every mourner drop a stone. He fell asleep by the
Lethe side at Ottawa last February, in the ripeness of years and full of honors, and
now the pools will rest. His age was 79.

Many were the honored guests among clergy, nobility and laymen who partook
of his sumptuous bounty in the midsummer outings at the camp. He was super-
lative as a host, and as an angler peerless. No such doughty wielder of the two
handed rod as he. His river record was never beaten. Bereavement falls upon the
craftsmen heavily, like the penumbra of an eclipse. Life long friends lament him
as a good man gone, jovial and companionable. The civic record says: "His
name was associated with every good work in Ottawa, and his purse was always open
to every benevolent and deserving cause."

Mr. Gilmour was a bachelor millionaire, domiciled with his nephew, John
Manuel, who now inherits his possessions, and to a degree his proclivities and his
worth. Of the many elegant private residences of the Dominion capital his was the
most pretentious. It is located on the verge of the limestone cliff whose base is
washed by the swirl of the Ridean Falls, and under the very aegis of the Parliament
buildings whose clustering towers and aspiring dome overlook a great natural basin
enclosed by circumvallant hills clothed with forest. This mansion has an aristo-
cratic bearing of the Old World order. Lofty walls of stone and gates of iron
enclose its servants' quarters. Palms, magnolias bananas, orchids, oleanders and
other tropical plants flourish under glass. Heads of buffalo, moose, deer and caribou,
and various trophies of the chase adorn the halls; and in the picture gallery is the
finest collection of paintings in Canada, many of them purchased by the proprietor
at great expense during extended travels in Europe and Africa, and fully one-third
illustrating wild life on the remote frontiers of the Dominion. (One of these
subject was reproduced recently as a reminiscence of the "Glassy Pool" on the
Godbout).

From a terrace on the crest of a cliflf a flight of 115 steps descends to a rustic
boat-landing by the river margin beneath, where the famous steam yacht, "Cruiser,"
the hero of many adventurous voyages, sometimes lies; more luxurious in her ap-
pointments than Cleopatra's barge, more sumptuous than a Pullman palace car. She
is eighty-five feet long, as staunch and steady in a sea-way as the great mail steamers ;
and I can fairly see her now, as I recall a former voyage, taking the combers of the
St. Lawrence rapids in flying leaps as she speeds her way down river from Ottawa
to Quebec, the starting point for the lower river, Morituri salutaris.

The events of fifteen years ago come back, dear, reader, as vividly as if no
interval lay between ; as if the grand old sportsman were not already dead and buried
and wrapped in his winding sheet, stark and stiff. In my mind's eye I see him
standing on the quarter deck, six feet four inches high in bodily presence, sniffing
the first whiff of the salt sea air from the Gulf, as the bow of the sturdy craft
dips into the whitening foam, buffeting the surges and throwing them aside as she

(86)

A JUNE RISE ON THE GODBOUT. 87

bowls along. Such voyaging is the very ecstacy of exhillaration. And then the
anticipation of the sport that is to come when we )get below and the salmon strike in.

As the late lamented Francis Francis of London Field writes in his rapturous
"Sporting Sketches," all alive to the spirit of the occasion : "It is a strange thing
how the very mention of salmon-fishing makes one prick up one's ears, and how the
thought of it sends a sort of thrill through pulses grown old and torpid, and how,
even when one is declining into the vale of years, the prospect of a week's good
flailing in a well stocked, kindly dispositioned river sets one's spirit bounding and
sparkling with delight. We chirrup and we sing. Very little makes us laugh, and
jokes which would have been regarded at any other time as very small beer are
now most excellent fooling. Ha, ha ! ho, ho ! Cackle, cackle ! Dash it all ! I feel
twenty years younger. By Jingo ! I feel thirty years younger. I feel — I feel — jolly
thirsty, old fellow — don't you? Pass the lotion. Here's health to man and death
to fish !"

Gilmour's bon hommie was just the same. His Scotch humor was always at the
fore, like the burgee of his yacht.

Very few yachtsmen make the tour of the lower St. Lawrence, though its
salmon rivers are numerous. The distance is great; the channel intricate and beset
with shoals, the scenery monotonous and depressing, and the expense heavy. Only
at a few eligible locations along shore are signs of human life — here a fisherman's
cabin and there a solitary post of the Hudson Bay Company. The north coast
especially is for the most part bleak and forbidding desolation for hundreds of miles,
and the only creatures that exist there are the weird birds which love the crags
and the storm, the tumbling porpoises and the mysterious seals. From the abutting
promontory which forms Cape Diamond at Quebec to the castellated rocks at Henley
Harbor, near the eastern entrance of Belle Isle Strait, 800 miles away, there is an
almost unbroken wall of granite, except where it is slashed by the impetuous streams
which have cut their passage through its perpendicular face. These generally find
their sources in lakes situated far back on the extended plateau above, from sixty
to eighty miles away, and are mainly supplied by the melting of accumulated snows
of protracted winters. Some of them, like the Montmorenci, near Quebec, pitch over
an escarpment one hundred feet high or more. Others tumble to the sea in a series
of falls and cascades, set back in the rock canons, which are over-topped by forested
mountains, from which they emerge in varying moods of froth and eddy. Others
again make their exit by an almost continuous rapid, like a sluiceway. Most of
them are barricaded by insurmountable walls two or three miles above their mouths,
so that the salmon cannot ascend. At the same time, such as present a continuous
rapid, while they are most accessible to salmon are utterly impractible for the angler.
The number which afford conditions suitable for both fishes and fisherman, that is,
a succession of pools and rapids, either for a limited distance or throughout their
whole length is appreciably small. The Godbout is the very best of them all, both
for its scenic attractions and its comfort, and I shall never forget the sensation of
feeling snug when, after four days' perils were passed, we ran in under the hos-
pitable land and anchored out of the tide and the swell which rolled in from the
Gulf. The "Cruiser" seemed to know her holding ground instinctively, and her
anchor chain had hardly rattled out of the boxes when a school of grampuses began
to spout and sport alongside, and the usual attachments of boobies and gannets
swung out with cries and screams from the neighboring rocks to reconnoiter. At
once Napoleon Comeau, the river guardian, came aboard from a little hamlet on
the beach, and by dusk all the' stores were on barges en route to the camp, two miles
above.

88 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

I doubt if there is any other extant or wiH ever be taken again, for these chronicles
which I am writing are those of a private river and not of a club holding. While
Gilmour lived, none but invited guests ever came, and of these only three to five at
a time, for the Godbout was reckoned as only a three-rod river, that is, it afforded
a complement of fishing for only that many anglers, although there were no less
than fourteen pools all told. And now that the proprietor is dead, who knows what
changes and chances may betide?

Up river as seen from the "Cruiser's" deck, the vista opens most charmingly,
disclosing an expansive amphitheatre inclosed by terraced hills clad with forests of
spruce, with the river winding through and spreading out its shallows which are
divided by pretty wooded islands. A zig-zag path climbs to the summit of the left
promontory, where a flagstaff sixty feet high is planted, and a rustic summer house
affords rest and shade. Looking seaward from this point of vantage, which is a
conspicuous landmark to navigators fifteen miles away, there is an unbroken waste
of water as far as the eye can reach, with here and there a vessel in the ofiing; and
in the foreground great combers of "surf" roll in and chase each other over the
sandy flats.

Multitudes of sea fowl hover over the landwash picking upon flotsam. On many
of the higher elevations, landward, patches of snow can be seen, for June on the
Godbout is no farther advanced than April in Montreal. The five cottages and all
the outbuildings of the camp are in full view with half a dozen Castle-Connell cots
or punts, aligned upon the beach in front. The largest of the cottages has a tower,
with a chamber in the second story and a sky parlor in the third. On the ground
floor are three chambers, a dining room and three bath rooms. Close by, the kitchen,
ice house, fish house, etc. When the lord-proprietor arrives the Union Jack is
hoisted on the tower, and at the close of the season it is housed again until the nex»
rolls round. To the gaffers and the denizens of the Nascoupie village at the anchor-
age below, it is the prime event of the }-ear. Earthquakes and eclipses are nothing
to it. Such a larder and luxurious appointments as the camp possesses, few anglers
have ever seen ; nor such an equipment of rods, reels, lines, flies, gaffs, wading
stockings, weighing scales, score books and slates, face protectors, fly oil and the
like. When summer finally breaks in, it usually does by the middle of June, the
blackflies are "the very devil," and nothing in nature so much tries the angler's
temper and patience. Can the mere novice imagine a person standing helpless for
forty minutes, with both hands holding the rod, while he kills his fish, and the un-
conscionable insects attacking him on every exposed part of the body? No writer
ever did justice to the dilemma.

Gilmour used to say that there were no rivers in Scotland like the Godbout for
"wickedness," and he always enjoyed testing the mettle of strangers. Killing and
securing a salmon in a quiet stream is quite a different performance from bringing
one to gaff in an impetuous rives like the Godbout, for there the labor is excessive,
and the utmost tact is often required to save a fish. From its source to its mouth
it is a turbulent stream, tumbling and careering through gloomy mountain gorges
with a continuous pitch, and piling itself into billows of foam against huge holders
which obstruct its tortuous channels. It seems a marvel how the salmon can ever
work their way to their spawning grounds in the upper stream.

The limits of the fishing is at what is called the "Upper Pool," where the long
pent waters rush downward through a rock cut sixty feet deep with an impetuous
discharge and spread out into a broad basin just under the shadow of an inpinging
mountain. After whirling for a while in an inky eddy flecked with bubbles and

A JUNE RISE ON THE GODBOUT. 89

foam, it jams itself against a confronting cliff, and then dashes off again as im-
petuously as before, though in a broader and more shallow channel. Below, the
shores are nearly vertical all the way, fringed with trees. The bed is choked with
boulders, and the air is damp with the spray which rises from the churning waters.
It is whiteness all the way to the camp, save where temporary pauses are made at the
pools, which I dare say are most acceptable and necessary halting places for the
salmon in the tedious ascent. Following the bank of the river a path has been con-
structed through the woods with much difficulty and expense, so as to communicate
with the pools which would otherwise have been inaccessible. Trees have been
chopped away and rocks blasted out, hewn logs stretched across chasms, hollows
filled up with stones and earth, hand rails placed where the brink is dizzy and the
footing precarious, jetties of stone built up around projecting cliffs which bar the
passage. Drinking cups are found at cold, wayside springs, which trickle down
the moss-grown rocks. At two of the pools long ladders are laid over boulders in
the foaming mid stream in order to reach to points of vantage for casting. At other
pools punts are moored for special service there. At one place, halfway down the
stream, a crossing is effected by a rope ferry, which traverses the foot of an angry
rapid to a landing cut in the solid rock, whence an iron railing assists the ascent up
the bank. The expense of all these aids and improvements was great. Surely here
the luxury of salmon fishing must be enjoyed. And yet mishaps are numerous, and
once Milford, the Earl of Dufferin himself got a ducking at the "shea." It is a
"wicked" river.

Rivers are gauged as I have intimated, according to their capacity to afford good
angling for a given number of rods. When a party is on a river, certain pools or
divisions are assigned to each rod day by day, and these pools are fished in rotation
so that all have equal chances. The run of salmon begins about the middle of June,
though a few fish sometimes arrive earlier. They come in detachments with each tide,
and an experienced hand can generally tell whether the arrival be large or small.
In the early part of the season the rivers are very high from the melting of the
snow, and back on the table lands, so that the lower pools afford good sport at low
tide, but as the flood gradually subsides and diminishes in volume the lower pools
within reach of tide water become useless because they are shallow at low tide and
salt at high tide. In neither case will salmon take the fly. It is apparent that an
early run is most desirable, for the river is then likely to be full with the spring
flood, and the fishing range is much extended. Average weight of Godbout salmon
is eleven pounds. In many other rivers it is double and over. However, it is a
prolific river, the catch in one given year exceeding 50O fish to five rods, aggregat-
ing a weight of 5,200 pounds.

CHAPTER XVII.

ANENT THE SALMON.

In casting about among the many angling books which have been written I
discover that the literature of the salmon is for the most part painfully hackneyed.
Every author is voiced alike. There is the same theme, similar treatment, and one
uniform arrangement. Each book aspires to be a ''complete" treatise, and every
one is oracular. Classes are formed, the impresario comes to the front, and every
scholar is expected to toe the mark. Then follow, by rote, the biology of the fish,
his habits and characteristics, and ''when, how and where to capture him," con-
cluding with some wild anecdote or bit of poetry by way of a snapper. No detail
is omitted. All the elements are presented. If any variation is attempted, it runs
into the speculative and mysterious The study becomes as classical and occult as
Madame Blavatsky's theosophy. The ways of a salmon seem past finding out.
The more abstruse and empirical the treatise is, the more eminent becomes the phil-
osopher; and the stronger his "pull" on the credulity of his readers, the higher the
price of the book and the wider the play of his fancies. Yet the guild of anglers
has stood listening and entranced for eighteen centuries. Strange that so much
inspiration can be drawn from a single string I But is it not time we had a new
version?

I have lad faith that a master spirit might yet appear who would aerate the
pool, and place himself in such perfect touch with his readers that when he leads
one to the river side (in his mind), be it adept or novice, he will be able to imbue
him with the full power of the subtle sentiment which animates the pastime of
salmon fishing. By such quality he may evoke all the possibilities of the theme,
and we shall have not only the mtrinsic melody, but the full symphony. By somf^
sort of mental metathesis he will put his pupil in the place of himself. He will
guide him to the swirling pool and point out the exact spot in the curl of the rapid
where he shall toss his fly. He will act as mentor to him all the way through,
precisely as if he were in bodily presence beside him — the only difference being tha-t
instead of jogging his elbow here and giving a timely hint there, the angler will be
left entirely to the exercise of his own judgment and discretion when he comes to
wield the wand. Given a manual of tactics for an infinite number of hypothetical
situations, prescribing for each a process, and coupling whys with wherefores, and
causes with effects, he will have full liberty to make his own selection of materials
and methods. He pays his money for his information, and he takes his choice;
only he may not be able to catch any fish ! However, no writer that I know of, save
one, has ever exhibited the rare faculty required to produce a true vade-mecum
for the salmon fisher, and he, unfortunately for the craft, seldom airs his knowledge
through the medium of cold type. If he only would put it to practical test? No
one can afford to go salmon fishing nowadays unless he has a mint of money ; and
rhe man who does go has his object lessons right before him. What need has he of
'•>ooks when he can have realism? Substance is better than the semblance. And of
what value are books to the multitude who are disbarred ? Angling books have had
their day. Nowadays the canoe-man does all the coaching. Very few salmon
anglers undertake the rough work of the old school. They do not care to pit their

(90)

ANENT THE SALMON. 91

mettle against the temper of what Scotchmen call "wicked rivers," where the capture
of a heavy salmon is a test of true strategic cleverness and physical endurance rather
than of mere mechanical manipulation. Most of their fishing is done from canoes
or boats on glassy and streamy water, with two canoemen to handle the craft.
They have spent fortunes to secure their rivers and equip their sumptuous cottages
which have taken the place of primitive camps, and it has taken time and money
to reach the delectable ground. They do not propose to work their passage leading
the horse. Therefore, as has been stated, the boatmen do all the work. They
carry the gentleman's rod and wraps and rubber cushion to the canoe by the river
side, and make him snug on a seat amid-ships. Then they pole out to the middle
of the stream or the most likely portion of the pool, which they all know like a
book, and drop killick to hold the canoe in position. They suggest the most killing
flies, for they are thoroughly posted by critical observation, and the angler makes up
his cast accordingly, and pitches it at the spot to which he is directed. Boatmen
instantly detect a novice, and thenceforward lose no time in working their varnish.
They show him how to cast properly, and how to pump the rod in order to attract
the fish, and how to fasten to a rise. No person more able and ready to coach than
they. Sometimes they will take the rod in hand themselves, and deliver the line in
a way to astonish the tyro. If a fish fastens, they hand the rod back to the angler,,
then up killick at once and follow the fish with the boat, snubbing or humoring it
according to its moods. These tactics amount to the play of an automatic reel,
and the angler has only to keep the tip of his rod well up, except when the fish
jumps; the boatmen "do the rest." If the fish jumps, the tip dips responsively. else
the salmon will free himself. Each crew takes personal pride in the achievements
of its canoe, and of the trophies it returns to the camp, all of which are credited
to the patron of the boat, whoever kills them. Usually the boatmen tire the fish
out in twenty minutes or so by skillful navigation, and gafi him alongside of the
canoe ; but if they have an experienced angler aboard, they will go ashore on
occasion, keeping deferential silence from start to finish, and venturing no suggestion
until the result transpires, when critical remarks are allowed to be in order.

The foregoing is the vogue on many rivers. Boats are used wherever they
can be, because there are many pools or more properly swims which cannot other-
wise be reached. On rivers whose mid-channels are studded with boulders, ladders
with boards are often laid out to the best casting stands, and from one point of
vantage to another, so that an angler not especially expert in handling a salmon on
the line, can do so with excellent chances of saving him by simply following the
course of the ladders up and down the pools, as the fish may happen to lead him.
Canoes are generally used, but on the Godbout there are Castle Council punts some
twenty-six feet in length, which are very stiff and safe, even under the crucial test
of the roughest water that any craft ought to venture into. On narrow rivers like
the Jaquet and Charlo, which can be covered by a maximum length of cast, no
boats are required, and on the Nepissiguit the channel pools are too strong and deep
to be fished from canoes, and have to be reached from marginal rocks and ledges.

Of course the style of gaffing a salmon depends much upon whether the gaflf is
handled from a canoe, a shelving beach, or a steep ledge, and the length of handle
varies accordingly. For the rocks it may be ten feet long, and the feat of getting a
fish securely on the iron under such disadvantages is difficult indeed. Some anglers
invariably beach their fish when they can; others prefer to gaflf from the canoe.
None choose the rocks. It is possible for the angler to gaflf his own fish from
boat or beach, but not from a vertical rock. Old anglers who have had unfortunate

92 AX ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

experience with bunglers and lost many fish are chary of strange gillies, fui there is
nothing more exasperating, after a forty minutes' tussle with a strong fish, than to
have some slouch barely scratch him with the point of the iron as he wallops past an
arm's length oflf, working up renewed energy which gives promise of a long con-
tinuation of the fight. However, one cannot always choose his own gaffing place.
Gravel beeaches are not conveniently at hand on most rivers. Neither can an
angler always keep out of the water when he fishes from the shore. Says one old
veteran : "I never wade." Doubtless. But there are rivers where you would have
to wade or swim to follow your fish. On such wild water a gaffer is indispensable.
One should never be in a hurry when he wishes to fix a fish on his iron. Put
the gaff into the water as quietly as possible, and unobserved of the fish, to the
depth of sixteen inches or so, and make the clip, point upward and inward, sharply,
but without jerking, endeavoring to hook him just abaft the shoulders, which is the
center of gravity. If hooked elsewhere in the body, the fish gets a big leverage with
head or tail, and will make a ghastly rent in his flesh, if indeed he don't flop oflf
altogether. Never strike a fish in the belly. Nothing is more unsightly than a
great gaping wound, especially if the entrails protrude. I notice that a few old
anglers have adopted a big landing net with a two-foot span, which has its advan-
tages ; but one would think it clumsy to handle, and likely to scare the fish. Veteran
river men invariably carry a billet with which to whack the salmon on the head as
soon as he is lifted out of the water. It gives him a speedy quietus and a better
flavor when eaten. Moreover a thumping fish makes a hideous noise in the bottom
of a boat, and scares other fish away. Few anglers think of this.

Lots of things are to be borne in mind when one goes salmon fishing. One
object is the reel. Keep your eye on the drag, and don't let the line back-lash or
overrun. An unexpected jerk on a line will do this and make mischief in an instant
which an hour of labor will not undo. "Striking" a salmon will lose oftener.than
win. In general, a heavy salmon hooks himself by carrying down the fly in water
which is curly, else he is not hooked at all. To strike a salmon on a taut line when
well down stream would be fatal to tackle. An old angler simply lifts the tip of
his rod gently, and so tightens the line at the proper instant. In dead water, or a
back eddy, when the fly is well under the surface, smart stroke is not only admissible,
but necessary. When to strike, how to strike and whether to strike at all, are
questions of the moment, not to set precept. Categorically, the whole subject of
salmon angling is one of varied and continued practice. An angler may fish the
same river all his life with best success, and yet fail to kill on a different river until
he has studied its different idiosyncracies. It is the intensely specific characteristics
of rivers which makes salmon fishing a superlative art and the most difficult to
master of all piscatory attainments. A doctor might as well undertake to diagnose
one case by the symptoms of another as for one angler to judge of the temper of
one river by that of another. The more we fish the more surely we discover this
truism and its parallel. One cannot always judge character by physiognomy; we
discover it by trial. The master hand may outline the rote and routine of an
angler, but he cannot make an adept. Perhaps this is why an old hand is tempted
to discard treatises. Fortunate he may be if he is not compelled to hang up his
rod now altogether. To the "contemplative angler," still robust and hearty, but
poor in purse, it is misery to reflect that he must yield his pastime before his day
is run. Rivers continue to flow, and the plash of the salmon is heard in the
stream, but he may not fish ; the priceless waters are open only to the few who can
afford to buy. The willow wand is superseded by the golden rod. But what

ANENT THE SALMON.

93

astounding sums these angling privileges command ! Ten, twenty, thirty thousand
dollars, and even more, for a few rods of river front with a bare fortnight's fishing
per annum! To those who have enjoyed the freedom of the river, without money
and without price, in years gone by, the changed condition of things seems strange,
and the question naturally comes up: How has it all happened? Has the intense
passion for salmon fishing, whose charms all the poets and anglers have sung from
the days of Oppian to Bethune, at last reached fever heat? Or is it merely the
pleasure of exclusive possession that enhances value?

I remember once coming down the Restigouche twenty odd years ago, and
stopping at old man Merrill's over night, half way up the river. He occupied a
small log cabin beside a splendid salmon pool, and lived a lonely life in a very humble

SALMON' FISHING ON THE MIRAMICHI RIVER.

wa3'. He was poor, but gathered no end of salmon during the season ; indeed
became a drug at his table, and a steady diet of the pink-hued fish for forty days
would cloy his stomach. Wishing to do the handsome act for his guest at supper,
he graciously set before me the best his larder afforded, in his estimation, which was
a broiled smoked herring. This seemed to be the piece de resistance. No cooked
salmon was in sight. I was hungry for a mess of the dainty fish, for I was fresh
on the river myself, and for hours previously as the ever dipping paddles sped us
down the stream, I had kept thinking: "At Merrill's we will have fresh salmon."
However, I had no occasion to feel disappointed, for I had only to express my
desire and abundance soon appeared. I ate of the coveted viands to repletion, but
old Merrill "allowed" that he had had so much of it all summer that he didn't think
I would care for it. That seems to be the logic of the present status on the river.

CHAPTER XVIII.

COME, LET US COMMUNE TOGETHER.

Dear Old Pard — The days when we touched elbows at the desk seem not long
ago, so swiftly do the winged years fly; yet during that fleeting interval how many
veterans of the old craft have gone out from among us. to meet no more by the
sunny streams of earth ! We shall see them no more until we gather at that
shining shore, which is the boundary and beginning of a new life. For a little
while, good friends, adieu ! and joy be with you if ye stand among the blessed
chosen !

I love to think of those dear old comrades, with many of whom I have
tramped and camped a quarter of a century ago, even while their venerable heads
had already begun to whiten; and I rejoice to feel that the pleasure of the
retrospect is scarcely less satisfying than the pleasure of the hope which throws
its gleam forward, even to the far-off portals of the heavenly arcana. The halo
of their exit is hardly less radiant and beautiful than the pervading glory of the
promise. "Blessed are the pure in heart." And who shall hereafter live to better
illustrate by their pure lives and simple manners the goodness which so often
germinates and thrives among the sinful rocks and tares?

Thanks be to the Creator who has so ordained the laws of nature that the
longest and best lives are vouchsafed to those who find their chosen quest and
pleasure in the open air ! No tree of evil grows in the Eden of the angler ; but
vigor of mind, elasticity of limb, amiability of manner, loving kindness, content-
ment and healthful introspection cluster and hang like grateful fruit upon all the
branches everywhere. Wherefore I am enabled to rejoice that so many of the old
guard yet remain; that they still live to kindle new enthusiasm from the fire of the
ancient altars, and enjoy with us their long accustomed pastime. The silver
threads are already beginning to line your own brow, old pard, and your sturdy
limbs don't give out the involuntary play they used to do ; yet the afflatus within
your bosom is as mighty as ever, and you have a consciousness which needs no
quickening. The old monitor inside gives out as full, responsive and sonorous a
sound as if it had not already swung within its weather-beaten belfry for three
score years and ten ! To us, who are sauntering through the valley, it is indeed
delightful to hear "the ring of the true metal." May it chant the vespers for us,
when finally, at eventide, we reach the still waters !

Now, you know how it is yourself — be a man never so old, he still can plod,
and still can fish. Whatever other functions fail, this remains. An angler may
outlive all his usefulness, but he can never outlive his longing for the old haunts,
and the enjoyment of fishing, so long as he can sit in a boat and feel the nibbles,
albeit his joints are too stiff to play the struggling captive home. And this is why
I am constrained to write unto you, pard ; and, when I see the familiar name of
some member of the ancient brotherhood shine forth betimes in the columns of
j'our journal, to say to them : "Come, let us commune together." You remember,
once upon a time, long ago, "when we were first acquent," how the old guard used
to gather at the rendezvous, and what a mighty corps of new recruits there was,
and how they seemed entirely of one faith and one consanguinity, and how all

(94)

WILLIAM C. HARRIS,

EDITOR "AMERICAN ANGLER.'

COME. LET US COMMUNE TOGETHER. 95

listeners were entranced when another spoke? and how we fondly hoped the
family circle would remain unbroken for all time? It was a glorious constellation
of contributors, each of whom brought individual richness to the ingathering of
the common stock. Well, a catastrophe befell, and the hive scattered, never to
swarm again on the old camp ground. Some, as I have said, have passed from
life, others perhaps are dead to new associations ; yet I am indulging the earnest
hope that those whose names and faces were once familiar may be induced to
gather once again around a common altar, inasmuch as the "Angler"' has opened
the way by which all may enter. It was a christian thought which prompted you
to set up the Penates again that all may re-unite to kindle the sacred flame. One
by one I have watched the old names re-appear, and gleam out like the shining
orbs which herald the spangling of the firmament, and I have welcomed each in
turn with the ferver of one who hails a beacon light in the gloom. First, came
good old "Ned Buntline" — "may his years be long and end in peace ;" then the
ever-faithful gemini Isaac McLellan and "S. C. C." then the steadfast "Al Fresco,"
friends Rich. Sears, "W. T." and a dozen others who have earned three score
years of honors. Where is the rest of the old guard? Where are the veterans
Lanman, Conway, Logan, Mosely, Brackett, Kinney, "Ted Grayson," "Asa" and
that genial author who wrote the "Pleasures of Angling?" (Who of us have not
experienced them?) In the "American Angler" we have a rendezvous w-here all
can meet — a campfire where all can toast their shins and string the "long bow" —
a sanctuary where the lovers of the gentle art may withdraw in quiet and close
communion. Gentlemen it is not meet that we should live longer apart, and let the
fires die out. Will you not renew the old love again? "Come, let us commune
together !" Pard. I salute you !

Charles H.\llock.

NoTE.^ — The foregoing fraternal greeting to a brother of the angle and the pen was written
in 1882.— Editor.

THE TRIBE OF ESOX.

I have found very few anglers gifted with that nice perceptive faculty which
enables the ichthyologist to distinguish between the several members of the esox
family. Indeed, their distribution is so wide that it is difficult to obtain first speci-
mens of each in juxtaposition, so as to compare them together. The habitat of
the great northern pike is the Mississippi river and its tributaries, while the
muscalonge is peculiar to the St. Lawrence and its tributaries. These are founda-
tion data upon which I suppose it is proper to build distinctions. Pickerel (esox
reticulatus) of maximum size are often confounded with esox lucius, while lucius
is as often substituted for nobilior. All the written descriptions given by well-
informed fishermen seem to fail of practical utility in establishing conclusive dis-
tinctions when put to actual tests. It is only when the several fish are laid side
by side that the fundamental differences become apparent. Some close observers
go so far as to claim that there is a pike peculiar to Ohio river tributaries near
their sources, which are confounded with both the northern pike and the St.
Lawrence muscalonge. Recently, at the residence of Gen. Israel Garrard, in Minne-
sota, it was my good fortune to inspect some splendid specimens of these three
alleged varieties, which the general discussed with all the critical acumen of a
scientific enthusiast, and I accepted his points of discrimination with the ready
acquiescence of a disbeliever who wishes to be convinced. I submit the following
letter, written since the interview, which may throw some light upon this vexed

96 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

subject. You will note a reference made to a certain article which has appeared
in the columns of The Angler, relating to this third species of pike, but which had
escaped my notice. I quote what follows :

"Mr. Charles Hallock:

"My De\r Sif — I am sorry that I cannot refer you to the number of the
American Angler containing notices of the 'Chautauqua Lake Pike,' also known
as the 'Muskingum Pike.' and having its habitat in the tributaries of the Ohio.
This is a pike that has not been fully recognized and described by sporting au-
thorities, and I suppose for the reason that it has been generally called muscalonge,
and confounded with that fish. I think that it should be named esox immaculatus,
as the striking peculiarity of its appearance is the absence of markings or spots.
This marks the difference between it and esox nobilior and esox lucius, as well
as the reticulatus and fasciatus in a way that cannot be misunderstood. It is
possible that its habitat is confined to the Mississippi and tributaries, but Roose-
velt's account of a similar pike being found in waters of Cape Cod throws some
doubt on this proposition. The texture of the flesh and its flavor gives it the
highest rank among fresh water fishes. This perhaps cannot be said of any other
of the esox family, not even the nobilior. I once saw a 28-pound specimen in a
Chicago fish market, and where, as I expected, it was called a muscalonge. I have
seen several notices in the Pioneer Press of anglers bringing in muscalonge from
Clear Lake, near Anoka, but have not had an opportunity of verifying their fish.
A marked peculiarity of what I call esox immaculatus is the very small size of
the scales. I. Garrard.

XoTE. — The foregoing was written in 1S83.

CUT-THROAT TROUT.

I went up the Rosebud Creek from the Crow Agency at Stillwater. Montana,
in company with Agent McKeller and Clerk Charles H. Bostwick. on a trip to a
delightful mountain lake which lies at the entrance of the Rosebud Canon. The
lake was a temporary reservoir or interruption of the foaming torrent, which
rushes from a snow-capped mountain which alone shuts us out from the Yellow-
stone Park. The lake on one side was very deep, where the cliff went down plumb
into the water. On the other side the bottom was shallow and sloping to a
paddock of lily pads, which seemed to define the margin of deep water. It was
an unvisited lake, and there was no boat. At the head of the lake the Rosebud
tumbled in with a mighty rush of deep green waters over the boulders, and just
where it debouched the liveliest trout fishing could be had. The fish averaged
uniformly two pounds in weight, and could be caught as readily from one shore as
the other, either in deep or shoal water. There were very few of a size below
or above two pounds. I have never attempted to write up that trip because my
pen could not do justice either to the sport or the marvelous scenery which we
found there in the heart of the Rockies. 1 am moved to refer to it now only
because we caught fish there which I have never seen on the same meridian or
anywhere else. I have certainly watched angling reports ever since, in vain, to
discover some description which applied. The trout resembled the iridea of Colo-
rado in respect to the metallic black markings scattered like lustrous grains of
course black powder over its shoulders and body; but it lacked the rainbow lateral
stripe. Its distinctive feature, however, was a slash of intense carmine across
each gill-cover, as large as my little finger. It was most striking. For lack of a
better description we called them "cut-throat" trout. Have any of your corre-
spondents taken any like them anywhere along the range?

Note.— Written in 1884.

CHAPTER XIX.

ARCTIC FISHING IN SUB-TROPICAL WATERS.

New RivERj N. C, in latitude 35 degrees, never had such a chill in its whole
fluvial history as it experienced last month. From the Dth to the 15th of February
the morning temperature oscillated between ten and twenty degrees Fahrenheit, and
great sheets of ice and schools of torpid fish were floating all over the surface.
The greater proportion of these were sea trout (weak fish, of the marine family
Sciacnidae), weighing from ten to twelve pounds apiece, but there were many small
rock fish, besides a considerable variety of fresh-water pan fish. They were all so
benumbed with cold that they could be lifted out of the water with the hands, and
were practically within reach of all who chose to come and take them.

To the poor and unemployed the occasion was a Godsend, while every one else
without distinction who could hire a boat or scow, or improvise a raft, went out
fishing. Those who were industrious and well equipped made big fares, for the
cold snap which pervaded the entire country from the Atlantic to the Pacific sent
prices up two or three hundred per cent., and the local fish dealers and packers had
to hump themselves to supply the great metropolitan markets. Ordinary business
was suspended, labor could not be hired at any price, steamboat crews dallied on
their regular trips and picked up hundreds. The big lumber mills at Jacksonville, at
the head of ravigation, which had been running gangs of 150 men day and night,
were obliged to shut down because the saw logs froze up in the booms, and all went
fishing. Trains from Newbern and Wilmington brought down a good many fisher-
men. One lad of fourteen years earned $32 cash in two hours. One man caught
3,000 fish in five hours, which he sold to the dealers for $240. The aggregate catch
ran up to 50,000 fish. Regulation methods were discarded, while baskets, dip-nets,
small seines, rakes, pitchforks and oyster tongs were brought into use. Dealers
bought freely all that were offered. They did not so much mind enhanced prices
because they could procure unlimited supplies of ice at the cost of gathering it from
the rivers. Some boatmen earned three or four dollars a day at this work. Hun-
dreds of tons were obtained in upstream waters where the rivers were frozen solid
to the depth of three or four inches. These surfaces were covered with skaters of
both sexes, and assumed a truly Minnesota appearance ; orders for skates were sent
north by telegram and returns were impatiently awaited, but the amateurs were in
bad form and the execution below par. Such boreal phenomena are not likely to
be repeated in a hundred years, unless the sunspots enlarge and the solar heat be
minimized, for New River is not a fluvial freak subject to caprices of the frost king,
but a legitimate ward of the "Sunny South" (so named in poesy), whose shores are
clad with bright-leaved verdure the winter through, inviting picnics and siestas.
Magnolias, holly, bay, myrtle and thirty other evergreens simulate the summer
season, on those warm days when the haze and sunlight are upon it, and it is then
that the visitor from the north is wont to write letters of condolence to those
detained at home to shiver in frigid atmospheres. So much is one's enjoyment
enhanced by meretricious contrasts and comparison.

From a point where the Wilmington, Newbern and Norfolk Railroad crosses
the river, the stream follows a sinuous course through the woods for a couple of

(S»7)

98 AX ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

mile?, with many a cove and pocket, where large black bass may be caught with
bait, spoon, or bob of hair and feathers on almost any warm day throughout the
year. It then broadens into an expansive estuary which averages three miles in
width, and so continues for thirty miles seaward to Brown's Sound, whose brackish
waters come up to mingle with the outflow- of the upland swamps, replenished
diurnally by the ocean tides which flow in through the inlet, giving abundant nour-
ishment to many kinds of anadramous and fresh-water fish, which are seined by
the ton and carried daily to the Newbern and Wilmington markets, as well as to a
great variety of luscious oysters, crabs and terrapins. There is no such nurseiy
for fish of all sorts and proclivities as New River and White Oak River adjacent.
I have seen the drag nets capture at one haul both large and small-mouth black
bass, rockfish, blue and yellow catfish, mud cats, yellow perch, white perch, chin-
quapins, red horse, mullets, stmfish or robins, white and hickory shad, branch
herring, red drum, shots, weak fish, pickerel and garfish ; and once, at the Newbern
annual fair, which occurs every February, there were eighty varieties of sea and
inland fish displayed, all fresh caught from neighboring waters, besides nineteen
varieties of oysters. A happy combination of sound, river, estuarj', ocean and
inflowing creeks, and a meeting of tidal fluvial currents has made the waters
of Eastern North Carolina the most prolific nursery and pasture ground for edible
fish of all places on the coast. Early in February white shad began running, and
with the melting of the ice and warm weather which ensued, the run waxed heavy
Herring will follow the shad, and seining for both species will be active until the
middle of May. Seines are operated in some localities by steam, and $10,000 profit
has been realized by a single fishery during the season. As many as 180,000 herring
and 3,000 shad have been captured at a single haul. Some seines with the ropes
attached make a circuit of a mile. An outfit tor fifty men costs *2.5.00n.

Besides seines gill nets are used for catching shad, which, stretched on poles
lengthwise of the river, sometimes extend for a mile or more. And all the way
up the rivers are fishing stands made of poles or planks projecting from the banks,
where negroes stand with long-handled dipnets, and scoop the fish as they ascend to
spaw-n, sometimes lifting out as many as half a dozen at a time, worth 75 cents per
pair. Occasionally rude windlasses are seen, fashioned of unpeeled logs and poles,
and used for hauling drag nets, and there are also stake nets set across the mouths
of tributary creeks. Every settler along the riverside makes full use of his riparian
rights in this respect, and for a month past fishermen have been making big
earnings, two crews of ten men each having divided $700 in one instance as the
net profits of twenty-four hours' fishing.

As to angling for sport, pure and simple, it is an unknown art in these waters.
In December a great many weak fish or sea trout are caught with hooks and
handlines, and during extraordinary runs, such as occur periodically, hosts of ama-
teurs, including ladies, join the ranks of piscatory professionals. This fishing is
done in the vicinity of Beaufort and Morehead City, on the beach. In the fall
there is some lively trolling for bluefish, and in spring for Spanish mackerel, off
the beach, but river angling is almost unpracticed. Occasionally a venerable negro
will take his rickety old punt and steal away to a favorite bend in the stream,
where there is a deep hole and a stake to tie to, and sit so quietly that his russet
garb can hardly be distinguished from the dead grass of the marsh which lies
alongside. But sportsmen are seldom seen on the rivers. Natives do not under-
stand fly fishing and other scientific methods, and northern anglers have not yet
found their way hither. When they do they will have a rich experience. All

ARCTIC FISHING IN SUB-TROPICAL WATERS. 99

through April the bass fishing is superb, but I would not encourage angling in May.
which is the spawning season.

New River is no marsh-lined, reed-bordered alligator creek like many streams
on the southern seaboard, but a delectable broad water, with bold wooded shores,
which are interrupted by occasiqnal fresh-water creeks and umbrageous promon-
tories, which are successively unfolded to the enraptured gaze as the excursionist
proceeds on his voyage in steamboat or naphtha launch; and all along this beautiful
estuary club houses, shooting boxes and villas have taken possession of advantageous
sites. Conspicuous on the water front is the "Glencoe Stock Farm," operated by
Thos. A. Mclntyre, Esq., of the New York Produce Exchange, bearing some
similitude to Mt. Vernon on the Potomac, with its pretty waterside pier, steam
launch, pleasure yachts, cozy waiting house, flight of 100 steps surmounting the
wooded heights, and carriage road winding by graded ascent through a natural
glen. Within the year, since the completion of the W. N. & N. Railroad, of which
Mr. Mclntyre is president, traffic has grown to proportions which command the
unremitting services of two large freight and passenger steamboats, with accom-
modating docks and warehouses at two points. One of these wharves is G52 feet
long. Government improvements are being pushed at various points. Game is
quite as abundant as fish. Geese, ducks, brants and other wild fowl congregate
along the margins of the sounds and at the mouths of estuaries. Deer and wild
turkeys are in the timber. Partridges and quail are found in the old fields and
plantitions. Bears are the pests of farmers by their nocturnal visitation to hog
pens. Coons and 'possums are abundant.

I am somewhat particular in detail, because I believe New River to be the
coming winter and summer resort, by its supervening natural attractions, its equable
but bracing climate, and the accessibility with which it cap now be reached from all
points. Hitherto it has been little frequented, but the development of many new-
industries, and the investment of large capital right there is bound to bring it into
notice. There are good hotel accommodations at Jacksonville, the county seat of
Onslow, and a thrifty village. If the visitor would wish to make headquarters at
Newburn, it is within an hour and a half hy rail.

Note. — This chapter was written in March, i?.93. — Editor.

CHAPTER XX.

THE NEW DISPENSATION OF FISHES.

In the middle of last April, when the incoming steamers from Europe re-
ported icebergs adrift off the New Foundland Banks, sagacious minds predicted
marine phenomena of marked character. The presence of these bergs two months
in advance of their usual appearance indicated warm weather in the polar zone,
as well as the projection of an Arctic current into a portion of the South Atlantic
hitherto dominated by the Gulf Stream. Subsequent investigations by intelligent
sailing masters discovered that the Gulf Stream had been so encroached upon by
a cold current as to force it 600 miles out of its course. As this influx of ice
water showed a temperature of 32°, it became easy to account for the long and
backward spring, the cold, foggy and rainy weather which beset our eastern coast
line until as recently as the 1st of June. Its effect was seriously felt as far south
as the Capes of Delaware. Furthermore, it was a logical inference that such
great changes must exert an important effect upon the marine fauna, introducing
new species from the northern seas, and perhaps temporarily driving off some
species long recognized as local and indigenous to the waters whose temperature
had been thus suddenly chilled. Another natural consequence would be to intro-
duce vast supplies of fish food in new variety, to replenish a very sensible deple-
tion long since discovered to exist upon the old feeding grounds of our best
known commercial fishes,, and thereby to invite their return to those resorts long
frequented by the fishing fleets. Present results are justifying these conclusions.

For a dozen years past there has been a marked dearth of cod, mackerel,
herring and other varieties of fish, with poor fares and indifferent catches all
along the shore and banks. Causes visible and unknown combined to produce this
depletion. Fishermen had almost begun to despair of success, and were preparing
to seek other employments, when, by one of those opportune operations of nature
which can seldom be anticipated, fortune suddenly rolled in on the flood tide of
the Arctic current; and now they are finding abundance instead of dearth. All
vessels are coming in with full fares, bringing reports of fish crowding the ledges
and marine meadows of their old haunts, and carrying joy all along the coast
where livelihoods are gained by the hook and trawl. Bluefish, weakfish, mackerel,
cod, striped bass, halibut, and nearly all varieties are being caught a month earlier
than usual, and instead of striking at successive points along the coast as has been
their habit, and working their way from southern waters to points northward,
they seem to have invaded the whole coast simultaneously from Nova Scotia to
the Chesapeake.

No doubt a change of water and a change of temperature will work out other
results equally beneficial and less expected. As has been intimated, species whose
habitat has been restricted to other localities, are likely to be taken on new
grounds hitherto unfrequented by them. Their distribution will be widely
extended. Possibly the lobster, now so nearly exterminated, will reappear in
increased size and numbers. Even the gigantic marine fauna — the norwhal, the
whale, the sea lion and the walrus — may return to the haunts they frequented
three hundred years ago, and their presence as far south as Long Island Sound

(100)

THE NEW DISPENSATION OF FISHES. 101

become no longer a novelty. Oysters, clams and other shellfish may be stimulated
by an infusion of new diet and new materials for vigorous growth to increased
reproduction. There is no need to the speculative benefits which are likely to
result from the temporary displacement of the Gulf Stream by the polar current.
Whether it will soon resume its old channel, or whether the change is an initial
to mark a new climatic epoch like that which converted the Greenland of the
early Norsemen into an icy and sterile tract, is a problem which may well be
contemplated with more than ordinary interest.

Note. — Written in 1883.

THE EXPERT ANGLER.

Assuredly "bookish wisdom" and finical acquirements do not make the fisher-
man. Militia soldiers on dress parade may present as effective an appearance as
veteran regulars, but something besides toggery and efficiency in the manual of
arms is required to make a good fighter. An angler with superfine tackle and rig
may astonish the natives by his professional make-up, but unless he "understands
the habits of the fish and the character" of the water he fishes, he will make but
a poor fist of his angling. His ingenious manipulation of the rod will scare more
fish than it will attract, and all his frequent changing of flies and monkeying with
his patent shop contrivances will only lessen his chances of filling his creel. If a
gunner be restless and uneasy in the "blind," you may be sure the geese will veer
and fly high.

There is a closer analogy between hunting and fishing than many people affect
to believe. I am always surprised when I do not perceive the same caution
exercised in approaching the denizens of the rivers as the fauna of the forests.
The ostrich with his head in the sand is not more foolish than the man who
fancies the fish cannot see him because he cannot see them, A practiced eye will
detect a motionless fish or a glancing flash in the stream where one who is unac-
customed is unable to discover it after it is plainly pointed out. One should
approach an eligible part of the stream with unvarying discretion, even though it
appears to be barren. Hundreds of soi disant anglers ruin their chances at the
outset by the clumsy manner in which they approach the timid creatures which
they propose to entice and lay hands on. If market gunners behaved in like
manner, utterly ignoring the first principles of drawing on game, our city epicures
would get no canvasback ducks. A great deal more is included in a "knowledge
of habits" than consists in the mere superficial understanding of what fish eat,
how they live and what will attract them best or bring them safe to creel. If ft
be true of the forest, it is equally true of the brooks, that too much beating about
the bush defeats its ends. The silent hunter or angler, and quiet methods, secure
the goodlier results. If opinionated tyros only knew by what great painstaking
baskets are sometimes filled, they would discover that they have something yet to
learn in order to attain the acme of high art. A farmer's boy will crawl on his
belly for twenty yards in order to get at a big trout under the bank, and ten to
one he will yank him out. Herein he develops several requisite qualities of a true
angler. He is familiar with fish habits, and he exercises caution and patience —
without which success would be impossible. It is by the application of these that
the tow string is able to discount the silk line and reel. Books do not impart
the practical information which that lad possesses. I once met a party on the
Nepigon, late in the season, who had been fishing all the choice places along shore
where fish abound earlier, and had taken none. I took them in a canoe to a riff

102 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

in midstream, where a small island divided the current, and they caught a boat
load. You see, a man may be a prize winner at a fly-casting tournament and yet
have no "luck" on the streams.

It is not my purpose in these desultory notes to discuss low-grade and high-
grade angling. Of course a masterly cast with the fly will pick up a fish which a
gob and wattles can't reach. We all understand that, and we have long been
familiar with the logic which, from the days of Saladin, prefers dexterity to brute
force, commending that which soars above the thing which grovels. I am simply
trying to show where those who attempt to practice high-grade angling are
deficient, and that many who talk by the book are but bunglers in the manual art.
It is not every man who can talk horse that is able to keep his saddle or handle
the reins. Some pretenders may have the written code at their tongue's end,
whereby they mystify the credulous ; but they never can deceive a veteran. An
expert can read them off-hand and detect their short-comings the instant they
step toward the animal to take hold of the rein or put a foot in the stirrup. It is
so with the man who handles rod or paddle. It is not necessary to take him to
the river side to size him up. An apparently insignificant movement will give him
away. It is the same with the man who takes hold of a gun or ax, billiard cue,
foil or Indian club ; who steps into a carriage or a boat, or enters a drawing
room. Ignorance cannot be disguised. It is the companion of awkwardness, and
the two go always hand in hand.

One chief reason why most trout anglers fail is because they don't keep their
eyes on their work. I do not believe that a short-sighted individual can be
perfectly successful. He must miss a great many fish that rise. An angler should
never take his eye off the water. It should follow with constant vigilance the
vagaries of his flies. He should retrieve his line as seldom as possible ; being sure
always to strike the instant he thinks he detects a gleam. The motion of a trout
is often quicker than the glance of the human eye, and unless the angler is on the
alert the trout will have seen and investigated the lure before a contemptuous flap
of the tail has made the angler aware that he has come and gone. Often an
upward lift of the rod tip will hook a fish whose presence was not suspected at
all, the barb fastening to its tail, side or gill. Such incidents as these have given
rise to the notion that trout knocked the flies into their mouths with their tails.

One object of wading a stream is to avoid observation. Proper wading is the
most deliberate operation imaginable. A good wader will scarcely roil the water
in a mill tail. He will often pick up a score of fish without moving more than a
couple of rods. The fish will so little heed him that they play about his legs. I
have often waded through a school collected in a long reach of fairly deep water,
and then getting out on the bank and going back to the beginning, fished the same
pool a second and third time with tolerable success. Wading also enables the
angler to cover water that he could not otherwise reach, and it permits him to
fish with a short line. It is a great mistake to fish with a line that is not under
complete control. There is a great difference between stream fishing and pond
fishing. I seldom attempt a long cast. The more line one lays on a still surface
the shyer the fish become. A long line is like a long-range sharpshooter's tele-
scope rifle — intended to bring game where less effective weapons fail. A thirty-
yard or even twenty-yard line, laid evenly out on the wings of a masterly cast, is
an exquisite performance, but the accomplishment is seldom of practical use in
angling.

I remember once an amusing incident at Ridgewood, Long Island, where a

HON. ROBERT B. ROOSEVELT,

ANGLER AND AUTHOR.

THE NEW DISPENSATION OF FISHES. 103

visitor was permitted to fish an artificial pond of liver-fed trout, which were in
the habit of rushing en masse after anything thrown in, until they fairly made the
water boil. Of course they were not afraid of man at feeding time, though they
were a little shy on off hours, and of course our ambitious angler took a fine trout
at the very first cast, standing in full view upon the bank. If he had had a
"trot" line he could have taken two dozen on as many hooks. After playing him
well to creel, enjoying the suspense of a well-hooked captive for several minutes,
he cast again, expecting a repetition of the same old rush, but nary rush did he
perceive. A fingerling or two broke gingerly at his tail fly, but the most persistent
persuasion failed to fasten another trout.

Haec fabula docet that dead failures are possible in the best stocked waters,
and that the shoemaker is worthy of his last — or words to that effect.

HON. ROBERT B. ROOSEVELT IN .ANGLING LITERATURE.

I am convinced that the Hon. Robert B. Roosevelt has not had full credit for
the very important part he has occupied in the American anglers' guild, especially
during the civil war period, when the young men of the land, and old ones, too,
were too much engaged on the battlefields to spare time for sport, except it were
to eke out an occasional deficient ration for the camps by whatever game and fish
could be caught during temporary cessation of hostilities. Mr. Roosevelt was
the living intermediate who bridged the interval between Frank Forester and the
writer, whose "Fishing Tourist" (1873) and "Sportsman's Gazette" (1877)
brought the angling literature of America to its climax and was so attested by
Gill and Jordan. How comprehensive and aptly this history has been presented
in bibliography may be ascertained by reference to the columns of the London
Field (3 papers), for June and July, 1887, under the title above given. The com-
piler, in his review of the period indicated, allows that "nothing like a compre-
hensive manual of angling was published until 1864, when Thad Norris' 'American
Angler's Book' and Robert B. Roosevelt's 'Game Fish of the North' both came
out.'' That was during the year of the first lease of a Canadian salmon river, the
Nepissiguit. Roosevelt's book made especial reference to that famous stream in
its chapter on salmon fishing, itself a new revelation to the fraternity of fishermen.
How to fish for salmon and the implements to be used, and a description of the
sport, had never been presented before. The volume was a godsend to anglers,
for it included the technology of angling, fly-fishing, tackle-making, entomology,
fish culture, camping out, etc. It described new devices, new methods, and new
fields of sport which had come into the purview during the sixteen years that had
intervened since the enterprising J. J. Brown had prepared his "American Anglers'
Guide" (1849). Moreover, it introduced new species of fishes not previously
regarded for sport and identified others which had been in doubt. The whole
subject was in chaos at that time, scientifically considered. Experts had not even
quite determined whether a brook trout and a samlet (parr) were the same, or
that brook trout were not in fact immature salmon. The scientific world has
moved since then mainly by the contributions of men here present.

In 1865, the year following his first production, Mr. Roosevelt put out a
supplementary book entitled "Superior Fishing," relating chiefly to the fishes of
the Great Lakes, and touching the lately mooted subject of fish protection. These
two books, as well as my "Fishing Tourist" and Prime's "I Go a-Fishing'' (1878),
were all published by the Harper Brothers.

Not only must Mr. Roosevelt be recognized as a well informed author of
undoubted accuracy and reliability, but he was foremost with Agassiz, Baird,
Garlock, Ainsworth, Samuels, Prime and Mather.

CHAPTER XXL

BOBBING FOR EELS.

Speaking of eels, Mr. Editor, I don't know of anything that will make
a worse mess in a boat full of hamper and loose lines than a big, active eel,
fresh drawn from the mud. It is not so inuch that he twists everything
into an inextricable snarl, but he befouls everything he touches with a
viscous slime which nothing but drying in the hot sun will effectually
remove. Of course, in trying to clear the tangle, the slime gets on one's
hands, and when they are once besmeared you are comparatively helpless-
Frenchmen would say hors du combat; in fact, a foreign language can
alone express the predicament.

Perhaps you know how it is yourself? Eel slime! Slippery is no
name for it. It is slicker than goose grease and as sticky as fly-paper.
Did you ever try to turn a door-knob with your hands soaped? It didn't
turn, did it? But you could let go all the same? Well, eel slime sticks
while it slips. It is fast and loose at the same time. It holds on while it
lets go. Its ambiguity is as queer as the Irishman's frog which stands up
when he sits down. You can no more unsnarl a coiled line with an eel in
it than you can eat soup with a fork. If you are new to eels, or eels are
new to you, you are likely to persist in the effort until you are as hope-
lessly involved as a fly in a web. The eel will thread loops and bights
faster than you can open them out. He will thrust his head through one
ganglion and his tail through another, and then tie himself into a running
bowline, and reeve himself through the turn of the knot, and come out
both ways at once. And your hands are getting slippier and stickier all
the time. You cannot hold on to the eel, and the line won't let go of your
fingers. Your only recourse is to cut it off as close to the snarl as you
can and throw the whole mess overboard together.

But one can seldom get off so easily. Voila! When the line has
taken several turns around the painter, and over and under the cleats,
and through the handle of the water-jug, and over botn oars, the only
alteratives are, either to knock the boat to pieces, or cut everything loose
with your jack-knife. Of course the knife is in your pocket, for, being a
novice, you haven't thought to leave it handy on the thwart, and the
quandary is how to get it out and open without daubing your clothes and
the knife, and splitting your thumb nail. In any event there can be but
one solution of the gordian knot, and one series of results, and these are
a much-soiled suit, a spoiled holiday, an irrepressible eel, and a score of
two-feet lengths of cut line useless for shoestrings and not strong enough
for reef points.

As a. matter of fact, no one but a tyro will angle for eels unless he is
properly equipped and prepared. Fishing for eels, Secundem artem, as
an expert fisher, is one thing to catch one by chance, while fishing for
other fish, is quite another matter. If ever an old fisherman becomes
involved with an eel, the incident takes him quite unawares. No greater

(104)

BOBBING FOR EELS. 106

misfortune can befall an angler in a boat; but he is always equal to the
emergency. When an eel-sharp discovers what he has on his line, -he
summons to his aid his cutest expedients. He first clears all hampej
from the bottom of his boat, and then lifting the eel dexterously over the
gunwale, slips his foot on to his neck as he falls squirming to the boards,
and deftly disengages the hook; or, if the hook be gorged, he cuts the
line, or even amputates the head, care being taken to throw the body
overboard forthwith, or else to place it where its prolonged contoritions
can do no mischief. The most expeditious and approved method of deal-
ing with such hard cases is practiced in the West Indies, where the moray,
which is the most obstreperous of all eels, is hauled head-foremost into a
smack's scupper, and then clubbed as soon as ever his head appears in-
board. This moray is armed with wicked teeth, and his vicious attempts
to bite make him a two-fold terror.

I used to know something about eels when I was a boy, and I fished
for them con amore, especially those sweet salt-water eels, not of inord-
inate size, but just large enough to be good when cut into three-inch
sections, rolled in corn meal or bread-crumbs, and fried brown. Many
an appetizing meal have I made ofif fried eels at Nettleton's on Morris
Cove, and down at Five Mile Point, in New Haven harbor, and around at
Double Beach, and at Malachi King's at Branford, in the old days. The
head of the harbor is shoal, and when the tide is out it leaves broad mud
flats which harbor shellfish in variety and profusion.

Between the sand-beach and the flats was a ribbon of mussel-beds
and sedge, with an upright face eighteen inches high toward the water.
When the tide made, and the young flood had filled the head of the
harbor so that the depth of the water was even with the top of the
sedge, and all the barnacles and kelp which overlaid it began to seethe
and hiss with the gently-lapping waves of the advancing tide, I used to
moor a flat-bottomed skiff so that it would tail in toward the shore, and
near enough to permit me to toss 9. line in under the breast of the mussel-
bed; there sitting in the stern I caught eels galore.

The best time to fish was in mid-summer at the full of the moon, but
I could discount all legitimate methods of setting a lantern in the stern-
sheets on a dark night, with a southerly wind blowing up the harbor.
Then the eels would come up to the surface in schools and play about
the boat near enough to be touched with the hand. I could have scooped
a score at a time with a dip-net, but, scorning mean advantages, took them
fairly. I used a stout ten-foot handline with a bob of earth-worms, and
I had only to haul them in as fast as they caught on, lift them o^er the
gunwale, and slat them into a bushel basket placed conveniently at hand.
Assuredly, it was great sport. Seldom did one gorge the bait, or tangle
his teeth, so that the process was simple. Naturally I became quite an
adept in threading worms with broom-straws and bunching them into
attractive bobs of red-ripe lusciousness which was hard for eels to resist.

I never knew of but one lure to beat earth-worms. The same
reminds me of the eel-pots I used to set oflf shore, marking their location
with buoys so that I could visit them at flood tide and boat their wriggling
contents. These pots were wicker cylinders thirty inches long by a foot
in diameter, with a funnel in one end, and were baited with what would
most attract. OfFal was perhaps better than anything else.

Note. — This chapter was written by Mr. Hallock in 1886. — Editor.

CHAPTER XXII.

WHY FISH DON T ALWAYS BITE.

The subjoined extract is made from an anonymous letter printed in 1885. It
is a most instructive contribution, as the facts gleaned have been obtained from
continuous observation of the habits of fish in feeding. The fish in question are
black bass confined in a large glass tank or aquarium nine feet long by two feet
wide, and two and a half feet in depth. The writer describes their manners and
methods when served with live food, such as shiners or minnows. He says :

"Such a meal is always a most interesting scene. If the fish are very hungry
they will show it by an increased restlessness. They are then more alert and
active, swimming back and forth, sometimes chasing and attacking each other.
These encounters may be mere fish play, yet there seems to be too much temper
in them— too much promptness to strike back for that.

"But when the bucket of live shiners is served to them they at once come to
order. They await no grace, only the lesser fish are supposed to await upon the
greater, which they do with just as much filial obedience as the big fish can en-
force. It is but a display of human selfishness on a more unreserved scale, where
might or muscle makes the law. The large bass make the water boil as they
dash on the huddling and terrified shiners that try in vain to elude them. Again,
they will charge on the smaller bass to hold them back till their own wants be
satisfied. And it takes a great deal to satisfy them, for their selfishness makes
them gluttons, or else their honest capacity is amazing. They will gorge them-
selves and then lay off, often for several days. Frequently those as small as two
pounds have been observed to take from ten to fifteen two to three-inch shiners
at one meal. This makes it tolerably safe for the shiners for at least three days.
Their favorite feeding time is early in the morning."

From the foregoing the reasons are made sufficiently obvious why fish bite
freely at one time and not at another in the same water and the same locality,
and why some anglers have "good luck" today and some have bad tomorrow.
The fish gorge themselves and take a rest. It explains also why small fish only
are taken at certain times when large fish are known to be abundant. It is be-
cause they have been made to wait until the big fish have fed. Their opportunity
comes while the latter are lethargic and quiescent with surfeit. The duration
of the intervals between good fishing and poor fishing is ascertained, for the bass
are frequently off their feed for several days. Meanwhile the shiners have oppor-
tunity to multiply and develop; at least they are improved by accessions from
other localities, for it is notorious that they do not seem to diminish from year
to year as a rule. There is another reason which may be added to explain good
fishing one day and poor fishing the next, to wit: the nomadic habits of the
minnows, which shift their locality from time to time, the big fish, of course,
following them. Good judgment would therefore instigate an observant angler
to try a different stand in another part of the fishing ground, if he gets no bites
today where he had success the day before.

We find also from our friend's observation what experience had already
taught us, that the morning is the proper time for fishing. Indeed, of late years

(KXl)

WHY FISH DON'T ALWAYS BITE. KTT

I have wasted no hours between 11 o'clock a. ni. and 4 or 5 o'clock p. m. There
is usually a good spurt in the evening, when fish bite freely.

WINTER-KILLED FISHES.

People are often puzzled to account for the mortality among fishes, which
are frequently found dead in large numbers, in the ocean and inland waters
alike, and at diflferent seasons of the year, sometimes in midsummer and some-
times in the spring after the ice breaks up. There should be no mystery in this.
Why should not fishes be subject, like animals, to epidemics from diseases and
widespread death from natural causes?

If we turn to the elements of natural history we read that fishes are cold-
blooded vertebrates which live exclusively in water, and respire by means of gills
instead of lungs ; and that in process of breathing, the oxygen needed is secured
from the air which is mingled with the water. Fishes, no less than animals, are
kept alive by air, and without it they die. The phenomenon referred to by your
correspondent "J- G. R." in a recent issue of The Angler, where great quantities
of pickerel were found dead in Lake Umbagog, Maine, after the ice went out
in the spring, is one of the causes of fish mortality most easily explained. The
fish died from want of air.

If we place a given number of animals in a circumscribed apartment where
no fresh air is admitted, Ihey will exhaust the oxygen in time, and then die. In
like manner, if a body of water is hermetically sealed by ice, the oxygen it con-
tains will be exhausted in time, and the fish will die. But ice is porous, and unless
it becomes solidified by intense severity of cold, air passes through it into the
water below. Also, in temperate climates, there are usually throughout the
winter occasional periods of thawing, by which process air is absorbed; the ice
along shore is also melted, and air-holes are found in the body of the ice, to
which the fish instinctively resort, as animals would do to crevices or open windows
in the closed apartment, and are thereby revitalized. Under such conditions no
mortality occurs.

, Sometimes there is an unseasonable rainfall in the winter season which over-
flows the ice of ponds or lakes ; or the feeders of those lakes may be swollen by
a flood and overflow the ice ; and it is thus not uncommon for fish to find their
way to the overflowed surface through the air-holes, or the open water along
shore, seeking for air. If a hard freeze follows, these fish, becoming benumbed
and unable to find their way back, are frozen in and remain imbedded until the
ice finally melts in the spring and leaves their released carcasses floating on the
surface of the water.

Again, when the winter is ushered in by extremely cold weather, and the
water freezes rapidly, fish will congregate at open spaces for air, keeping near
the surface, and before they are aware of it the ice forms around them and in-
closes them. I have seen large blocks of clear ice cut from the surface of deep
ponds for domestic uses, containing many catfish and bull-heads, which are bottom
fish with hibernating habits ; but the winter unexpectedly overtook them before
they were ready to assume their torpid state and bury themselves in the mud.
Ordinarily they would have avoided such a catastrophe.

Some fish are more subject than others to mortality from this cause. Pickerel,
for instance, as referred to by your correspondent, prefer to keep on the shoals
near shore among the aquatic plants and weeds. In winters of alternate thawing
and freezing, they would be even better off there than in the deeper waters, be-

108 AX ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

cause the ice would occasionally become broken along shore, and the plants them-
selves supply oxygen; but calamities come when most guarded against, and the
pickerel of Umbagog may have been inclosed by the ice freezing rapidly to the
bottom, or even imbedded by a severe and rapid freeze at the beginning of winter.
The chubs, suckers and trout escaped because they kept in the deeper water,
which had not been exhausted of its air, or gathered around the mouth of in-
flowing streams, where small spaces are usually kept open all winter by the current.
The pickerel delayed seeking the deeper waters until it was too late, and they
were imprisoned.

The success which almost invariably attends winter fishing through the ice
is due to the fish being attracted to the holes in quest of air. Some species of
fish consume far less oxygen than others, and will therefore survive conditions
which would be fatal to those. This will also partly account for the immunity
of the chubs and suckers, while the pickerel died.

Mortality of fishes in the ocean is often caused by sudden changes of tem-
perature occasioned by the shifting of marine currents, just as sheep and cattle
in the Southwest are killed by a dry norther.

Sometimes fish are poisoned by the sudden outburst of subterranean mineral
springs or volcanic upheaval. Indeed, may they not, like terrestrial organisms,
be subject to epidemics and plagues, fever germs and the numerous fatalities
which result from sudden exposure to changes of temperature, or even of un-
familiar agencies which pervade the air, the water and the submerged land.
There are analogies throughout all nature, which if compared together, account
for much that is inexplicable. It is chiefly those things not seen which are
mysterious.

"holding hard and killing quick."

In an issue of The Angler the editor recalls some angling reminiscences at
Yankee Dam, on the Schuylkill, where he had some sharp work with a black bass.
He speaks of holding hard and killing his fish quickly, and invites criticism of the
method and performance; therefore, I am free to say that, under the conditions
illustrated, I do not see what else he could well do. Indeed, it was masterly work.

Inexperienced anglers should learn and remember that in the rough water
under all dams and natural waterfalls there is always a backset and undertow,
which operates greatly to the angler's advantage. It is to his interest to keep the
fish within the swirling water, and not let him run out into the uninterrupted,
swift current below. In the latter case, unless he gives line freely, he must break
tackle or lose fish ; for the direct result of holding hard then is to bring the fish
to the surface of the water, where the great force of the current would of itself
tear the hook out, unless it was so securely fixed, and the fish so heavy, as to
cause some part of the tackle to give way.

While holding a fish hard in the swirl the great knack and point is to so
counteract the leaps which he will be sure to make that he will not be able to
throw himself off the hook. The strain of the tense arch of the rod is something
immense. Instinct seems to teach the fish to take advantage thereof by leaping
clear of the water, so that, by momentarily relieving the strain, he may free
himself of the hook. In this little game he will generally succeed, if insecurely
fastened, unless the angler instantly responds by lowering the end of his rod to
a plane parallel with the level of the water. He must repeat this with each up-
ward leap of the fish, often two or three successive times in a minute. This is
what gives excitement to the sport far beyond that experienced in sluggish or

WHY FISH DON'T ALWAYS BITE. 10»

still water. It is a battle of muscle as well as of tact and strategem; and when
you finally bring your fish captive to your hand, you not only experience a natural
thrill of joy at your success, but you entertain such a respect for your fish as
will magnify your own self-importance many fold. In fishing short salmon pools
in heavy water there is no other resource but to "hold hard and kill quick." The
salmon must be worked toward the head of the pool (they almost invariably
take the fly at the foot), and brought to gafif at the earliest possible moment;
for if they are once allowed to run out of the pool into the dashing raceway
below, one might as well try to hold a locomotive with a clothes-line.

In following this advice fo "hold hard," there is always danger that the
pupil will fail to temper his strength by that delicacy of manipulation which can
only be acquired by frequest tests through long experience. A familiar illustra-
tion of this is the tendency to jerk a fish bodily out of the water as soon as he is
on the hook. What is meant to be sport then becomes nothing more than a
combined mental and physical spasm. Old anglers learn to weigh mechanical
forces with a keen perceptive sense, which enables them to determine when their
rods are overtaxed, just as they can tell, by an intimation of the spine, that they
are lifting too much.

After all, there is something more in the science of angling than the agnostics
seem willing to admit. It can be measured only by the multiplicity of conditions
under which it is pursued, and he who attempts to "hold hard" when he ought
to touch lightly will find himself in a worse predicament than the Frenchman
with his head out of a car window, who cried, when he had barely escaped being
hit by a bridge: "What for you tell me to look out, when I should look in?"

WHAT IS FLY FISHING?

Don't you sometimes feel like leaving the beaten path by the river when
your correspondents sail up to you with their cork helmets a-cockbill and begin
to talk about the advantages of shotting your fly, of letting it sink a foot or so
beneath the surface, of using a stiff rod for better effect in casting, and all such
sort of loose talk? I say, is there any sense in it?

I don't object at all to the methods, but I write to ask why their use and
practice is designated "fly-fishing?" That is what I am awake to know!

What is a fly? Is it an insect which dives, which lives under the water,
which goes to the bottom water-logged, or double-shotted like a corpse over the
side, at sea? Not at all ! It is a creature of the upper air and surface — ephemeral,
lambent, light as thistle-down, erratic as a feather, now touching the water, anon
darting into midair, here an instant and gone the next, restless as a humming-
bird, never still. Do you not perceive, then, that when you handicap an artificial
fly with a weight, however trifling or minute, you immediately take it out of its
class, because it is a fly no more? It has not even the capabilities and attributes
of a beetle, or grasshopper, or any other clumsy insect which happens to have
wings. It has no buoyancy or vitality. It cannot rise, or even maintain itself on
the surface unless the current be swift. It is inanimate and dead. Fly-fishing
indeed ! It isn't fly at all. True fly-fishing is an art which brooks no compromise.
It can never be engrafted or modified. Cross it with other methods of angling
and you have a sterile hybrid.

In the early days the aborigines used a bunch of feathers, hair, or deer skin,
arranged with rude regard to form and combination of colors, which they called
a "bob." They used it with a rod and short line, after the fashion which the

no AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

English call dabbing, or skittered it over the surface of the water; and with it
they caught many goodly bass, trout and pickerel. This primitive lure was really
a home-made hackle, and the way in which it A^as used was much nearer akin
to true fly-fishing than any sub-aqueous method employed since. Improvements
on the bob began when contrivances were deftly fashioned into close resem-
blances of natural objects, the outcome of which has developed into the marvelous
artificial fly of the present day. The moment metal attachments were devised
and applied for the purpose of intensifying the lure, or to imitate aquatic objects,
the evolution of the spoon began; and the greater the progress we make in per-
fecting the spoon, the further away we depart from its origin and germ, the
primitive bob. There are composite plants which yield diametrically opposite
products. Just so the bob is the parent of both fly and spoon ; but we can never
interchange one for the other in the correct practice of arts so far asunder as
trolling and fly-fishing. Engineers might as well try to use a diving bell for a
floating battery. The ostrich, with his rudimentary wings might vie with the
condor of the Andes in flight.

I am opposed, Mr. Angler, to combination implements and makeshifts of all
sorts. A mechanical jack-at-all-trades simply ruins the brotherhood and demoral-
izes the craft. Give me fly-fishing in its purity — or give me worms.

CHAPTER XXIII.

"fYSSHE AXn FYSSHEYNGE."
[Before tlie Minnesota Academy of Sciences, 18S1.]

Thus as written, wrote Dame Juliana Berners four centuries ago. We do not
spell it that way nowadays, but the subject stands the same, unchangeable, fixed,
eternal. The same interest invests it now as then; the same enthusiasm is kindled
in old and young alike. In infancy it is the initial out-of-door pastime. When old
age has outlived its usefulness, it still can fish ; and even after the mortal coil is
shuffled off there gleams a constellation in the heavens, beyond the dead line, to
illuminate the angler's path to glory ! Thus from the beginning of antiquity, when
"the waters covered the face of the earth," until the ultimate end of time, the art
and the subject are alike illustrated and ennobled. The pride of his calling dig-
nifies the fisherman, while topics much less scaly fail to win equal plaudits for
the pen.

From the days of Oppian, who was chief poet of the second centur\-, until the
most recent rhapsody of the modern author, the art of angling has been chanted
in song and expatiated upon in prose. Prof. J. J. Manley, of London, tells us that
there are no less than 800 books on angling and cognate subjects. The literature
of angling embraces the names of some of the most distinguished men of the cen-
turies. Angling is a standard gossip in the tackle shops and around the camp fire.
It is a subject on which any self-constituted censor may assume to talk intelligently.
So kaleidoscopic are its phases that none may venture to gainsay the most random
statements; so tuneful are its changes that it never grows trite. Its associations are
hallowed by its '"ancient and fish-like smell," like the old wines of Tokay and
Johannisberg by the must of the cellars. Nevertheless it is an uncertain field of
research, and I approach it with some such wariness as I would an old root under
a river bank, stuck full of fouled hooks, and bristling with broken snoods and bits
of line, knowing full well, from the circumstantial evidences, that there is a big
fish under there difficult to handle.

Ah ! here we have an immediate suggestion of the charm of angling. A big
fish difficult to handle ! Herein consist the challenge and incentive to any essay of
personal skill. How the wary old fisherman will rub his hands and chuckle, as he
cunningly selects and adjusts his most captivating lines, to victimize that educated
fish who has outwitted all before him! How carefully he lays out his lines and
establishes his approaches! And if he can only once get fairly hung of that fish,
what a crown of glory will he begin to burnish up for himself !

But I do not intend a tilt in the open field of angling. I will not even attempt

, to epitomize a subject of such vast amplitude and illimitable ramifications. I am

a free lance, merely touching a few salient points with the lambent flight of the bee.

Imprimis, I find that there is a certain kind of ozone in the spring atmosphere
which makes an angler wish to go a-fishing. He takes to water as naturally as a
duck. Thenceforth what enchantment invests the dark and shadowy river with its
varying mood and cadences; the rattling ripple and the murmuring eddy; the pale
buds of springtime and the umbrageous fronds of June ; the catcall of the jay and

(111)

112 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

the rasping trill of the kingfisher ; the cdor of the ferns and the sweet breath of the
opening flowers !

No wonder that the ardent angler takes the spring fever and begins to lift down
his rods from the rack and overhaul his tackle. Even the small boy catches the
infection and sighs for the waterside as he sits on his workbench and whispers :

"Father ! they say — the trout — bite — good — now !"

"Bite, do they? Well, well; you stick to your work and they won't bite you."

What a Babcock extinguisher to the youthful fire! "Truth crushed to earth
shall rise again;" but what of ambition thus mercilessly nipped in the bud? Where
is Izaak? Shades of the departed!

There are those who affect to despise anglers. Perhaps they associate them
with worms? Well, none of us should be too fastidious. One common destiny
waits on us, and all will have to succumb to it sooner or later. We are liable, at
any time, to furnish ground bait for bottom fish.

It is not for me to champion the Fraternity of Fishermen. They are abundantly
able to speak for themselves. Even the fisherwomen are lusty in their self-assertion.
It is hard to circumvent the eloquence of Billingsgate.

Daniel O'Connell and Richard Brinsley Sheridan both tried to talk down the
fish wives. The great counsellor even went so far as to call one of them an "old
hypothenuse !" but she berated him into ignominious flight !

(That was the last of the O'Connells.)

Heroically she defended the well-earned reputation of the craft, intensifying
with glowing visage the reflected luster of the emblematic twelfth sign of the
zodiac — "In hoc signo vinces."

Numerically, the angling fraternity is a power. In the city of London alone it
is said there are nearly 100 clubs, with a membership of 3,000, to say nothing of
as many more regular anglers who do not belong to clubs.

In America are at least 100 organized angling clubs, with an average member-
ship of over thirty persons. That this constituency is recognized as a power in the
United States is demonstrated by the deference shown to sportsmen by hotel pro-
prietors and transportation lines all over the country. Special excursion tickets are
issued every season by many railroad companies, and some of them furnish excur-
sion cars expressly fitted up for sportsmen, with sleeping bunks, kitchen apparatus,
rod racks, etc. One line defers so particularly to this class of patronage that it has
dubbed itself "The Fishing Line." For several years many railroad companies have
catered especiallj' to the anglers and sportsmen in general — their roads reaching
many of the finest fishing localities on the globe. In Worcester, Mass., there is
an excursion car company which leases cars to sportsmen, fitted up with every
appliance suited to their requirements. Parties pay so much per day and travel
wherever they wish, ad libitum.

Many of the most enthusiastic anglers are the railroad officials themselves. A
fellow feeling, therefore, makes them wondrous kind. Let us be grateful, then, for
the cordial sympathy thus begotten, and hasten to avail ourselves of the facilities
which they provide. Now is the accepted time:

"Oh, while fishing last, enjoy it; "He who clothed their banks with verdure,

Let us to the streams repair; Dotted them with various flowers,

Snatch some hours from toil and study. Meant that ye, tho' doomed to labor,

Nature's blessed gifts to share. Should enjoy some cheering hours;

Ye, who stand behind the counter. Wipe your reeking brows, come with us,

Or grown pallid at the loom. With your basket and your rod,

Leave the measure and the shuttle. And with happy hearts look up, from

To the rippling stream come, come! Nature unto Nature's God."

"FYSSHE AND FYSSHEYNGE." 113

It is said "There are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it." We
know that many families of fishes have become totally extinct since the initial epoch
of creation; but of those now in existence the total number of admitted species of
fishes inhabiting the waters of the United States is something over 1,400, the num-
ber of genera about 200, of families thirty-two.

Science divides the different races or groups of the world's fauna into classes,
orders, sub-orders, families, genera and type-species. Apparent species of fish fauna
are so numerous as to receive no attention from ichthyologists, unless they are
verified by typical examples.

Of the thirty-two families referred to, most are fit for food, though a very
large proportion have hitherto been rejected from the table.

Within two years, however, a club has been formed, with headquarters at New
York, and a large outside membership, for the express object of utilizing as food
what has hitherto been considered noxious or inedible. Qualified candidates must
have no gorge or compunction of stomach, and at stated dinners the initiated
ichthyophagi get away with an incredible lot of skates, shark fins, toadfish, lam-
preys, blowfish, sea cucumbers, echini, horsefish, sea spiders and the like.

A correct taste, however, long ago evolved and established four of the thirty-
two families as the choicest for food. These are the Salmonidae, which include the
trout, salmon, grayling, whitefish, charrs and smelts, represented by about forty
varieties ; the Centrarchidae, which include the bass, sunfish and perches, in variety
about sixty ; the Esoscidse, which includes the pikes, pickerels and muscalonge, and
the Cyprinidse, a very numerous tribe of dace, carp, chubs, etc.

These four families represent both of the great diversions of Acanthopterigii,
or spiny-finned fishes, and the Malacopterigii, or soft-rayed fishes; and it is a
gratifying coincidence that these fine edible fish are the ones which afford the
keenest sport to anglers. They are not only the most active, the most symmetrical
and the most beautiful in colors, but they are universally distributed among the
bright golden spots of earth. Their habitat is where the wood nymphs dwell, where
the birds carol, the gaudy butterflies flit and the bees drone; where crystal foun-
tains gush, and the green moss grows vivid in the spray; where every combination
of romantic rockwork. waving foliage and tracery of ferns and trailing vines —
of gentlest nature, animate and inanimate — combine to reproduce an Eden.

Wherever the leaping trout and sturdy bass are found there are no snakes.
In the deep seclusion of these Edenal retreats no noxious serpent lurks. In this
paradise without a devil, the harassed and toil-worn voyager seeks rest and quiet
retirement, and the poet draws his inspiration :

"Sweet Nature around me; the world's troubles far,
Believe me. we fishers philosophers are."

While all the four great families referred to are widely distributed throughout
the temperate zone, the Cyprinoids are found chiefly in sub-tropic belts, and actually
thrive in the hot and tepid rivers of Arizona and New Mexico. The goldfish, which
is one variety of the family, is easily raised in warm, muddy water, and cannot
stand too cold a temperature. He grows fat on a simple diet of bread crumbs, and
with this homely fare is happy. The Salmonidse and many of the Centrachidse, to
which the basses belong, are not found in strictly sandy regions. Trout are finest
in granite formations, and bass in limestone, though both are found in each. The
Esoscidse, or pikes and pickerels, thrive in both rocky and sandy tracts, in clear
running water and in turbid, sluggish ponds alike. They are particularly fond of
swamps and marshy places.

114 AX ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

All of these fish will, at times, take the artificial fly, the trolling spoon, the live
minnow or the still bait.

Besides these, there are the Siluridse, or catfish ; the Clupidae, which include the
herring and shad ; the Hyodontidae, or moon-eyes — a large-eyed fish allied to the
herrings, and the Scienidae, or sheepshead, which afford good sport to the angler
and are fairly edible food. The habitat of these is chiefly in Western waters. Sev-
eral of them will take the fly, others a ground bait. The moon-eyes, or "'golden
eyes," as they are sometimes locally called, run in schools, and often give pretty
fly-fishing in many of the tributaries of the Red River of the North, flowing through
Northern Minnesota.

The great majority of people cannot distinguish one family of fish from an-
other. Indeed, they cannot even distinguish the common varieties of the common
domestic animals — the horse, cow, dog or pig ; yet these varieties are very numerous.
On the show bench at the great dog show in New York last April, for instance,
there were sixty varieties of dogs.

We do not determine species by their colors, although colors are an mdication —
but by their specific characteristics or anatomical structure.

Now, an expert ichthyologist ought to be able to determine the leading families
of fishes equally as well in the dark as in the light, by simply passing his hands
over their bodies. Here are a number of specimens before us. Note the arrange-
ment, position and number of the fins, some prickly, some soft-rayed, some adipose ;
the scales of different shapes and sizes, large, small and indefinable ; the opercles
or gill-covers round, ovate, elongated; tails forked, crescent-shaped, square; snouts
elongated, snubbed or retrousse ; mouths of varying sizes and shapes, some bristling
with teeth, others smooth as an infant's gums. A blind man should be able to
read all these signs with more accuracy than the embossed literature of asylums.

Everything in nature has its counterpart. There are analogies throughout all
the kingdoms of creation. If we reason from analogy we are not liable to go far
astray. Observation made by actual comparison must be correct, as a general rule.

That we discover that fishes have all the five senses; that they can see, hear,
taste, smell and feel; that they think, reason and sleep; that many of them produce
vocal sounds, some of which are strictly musical. The stories of the singing fish
of Ovid, Pliny, and other ancient writers, are not mere fables. I suppose I have
myself heard vocal sounds from at least a dozen varieties of fish, notably, the
sheepshead, or river drums of Western lakes, and the malasheganies of the great
lakes, and on the sea coast the gurnards and drums. The drums are often heard
on the ocean bottom, while the sea robins, weak fish and grunts always croak when
lifted by the angler into the bottom of the boat. It is even maintained by some
accepted authorities that fishes can communicate with each other by sounds. If
they can they have never told me, and had they done so I should be too gallant
to give away their secret. But although I have not heard them converse in ichthyo
language, I have noted the wink of the eye, the twirl of fin. the sign manual, and
the tactical movement, which would do credit to stage pantomime or a plain Indian.

In the Western river drums, or sheepshead, the sources of the sounds are two
small ear bones (located in the head, of course). They are of the size and shape
of tamarind stones, and when dry resemble milk quartz. They are popularly known
as "lucky stones," and many persons carry them in the pocket to woo the fickle
Goddess of Fortune.

Fishes of the same river and brook have different complexions and varieties
of visage. Those who are familiar with them, as fish culturists, or those who

"FYSSHH AND FVSSHEYXGE." 115

propagate them, can distinguish some of them from others as readily as a farmer
can the cows or sheep of the same herd or flock. Fish, however, change their com-
plexions, and are liable to become light colored or dark, according to the surround-
ings, just as men become pale in the office or house, and tanned, freckled or red-
dened in the sun.

Trout, having no perceptible scales, and a skin of delicate texture, are more
sensitive than any other fish. Seth Green boldly declares that "trout can be bred ■
to any color, shape or flavor, by feeding and change of ponds, with as much nicety
and certainty as a cattle fancier breeds his animals."

It is a physical fact that all wild beasts, birds, reptiles, and even insects assim-
ilate to the color of the surroundings.

All fish, like other creatures, have their diseases and their enemies. Most
especially are they troubled with parasites and entozoa. Each family of fish has its
own particular parasite, and none other. These generally attach themselves to the
bodies of the fish behind the gills or fins, so that they cannot be rubbed off, and
suck their substance until they die. There are no less than 126 kinds of tremotoda,
or "fluke," found in fishes. (See Dr. Cobbold's Synopsis of the Distomidse.) The
treads worm and tape worm are the most common entozoa. Two years ago 1
fished the river Godbout, on the Lower St. Lawrence, and found them in every
trout and salmon taken. They infest the intestines, and I cannot learn that the
flesh suffers detriment therefrom or that injurv results from eating it

There is a great water beetle which is the especial enemy of the trout. It i?
about three inches in length, has large, strong wings, long sharp mandibles and
sharp, hooked claws. It is equally at home in the air. in the water and on land.
It can fly, swim and run. For the poor trout which it has marked for its victim
there is no escape. If the fish attempts to flee through the water, it pursues; if
it rises to the surface, instantly the bettle rises in the air, and hovering over it like
a hawk, pounces on its back and fixes his inexorable claws into its flesh. Then it
attacks him with its beak, and so destroys him. No Nemesis was ever so persistent.

Like the rest of animate creation, fish do not all live or feed alike, or occupy
the same localities. There are fish carniverous, vegetarian and insectivorous; fish
predatory and fish pastoral ; fish local and fish migratory Fish also adapt themselves
to their various requirements of temperature, quality of water, shelter, security and
reproduction. The angler who studies their habits, of course, knows where to
find them.

Take the great lakes for example. Where the shores are precipitous and rocky
and the water deep no fish will be found, because they can find neither food, shelter
nor spawning bees. Knowing this, the fishermen waste no time in useless quest,
but follow them to the shoaler water, shelving beaches and sheltered coves, where
they sweep them in with seines by myriads. In the winter these bays and coves are
covered with ice, and the fish naturally resort there tor shelter from storms and
for warmtli and food. Then the fishermen congregate to the spot by hundreds.
Whole villages of huts cover the ice field, and men, women and children are busy
day after day catching them with hook and line through holes cut in the ice. The
fish are easily captured, for they are desperate for fresh air. The greater part of
the oxygen has been exhausted from the long pent-up water, since the lake first
froze, and they rush to the holes for atmospheric air. just as half-suffocated persons
would do to an open window in an ill-ventilated room.

Fish live on air, like animals. Their gills are their lungs; just as our warm,
red blood is purified and restored in its vital'and arterial qualities by air passing

116 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

through our lungs, so is the cold, red blood .of fish by passing through their gills ;
and as by the process of breathing we extract the oxygen and vitiate the air, in
like manner do fish taking the water in their mouths, extract from it the air held
in suspension, and pass it out under the opercles, or gill covers, in a vitiated state.
A fish can be drowned in the water almost as easily as an animal, when the water
is prevented from passing over the gill covers in the usual way. For this reason
fish seldom swim down stream for any great distances at a time, and always
"heave to," as sailors would say, head up stream. Anglers take advantage of this
knowledge and kill their captives secundem artem. Often fish actually die in smaller
lakes and ponds when closed by ice simply for want of air, and when their dead
bodies are found floating on the surface in the spring, after the ice has broken up
and melted, people wonder at the mortality, and speculate upon the cause of the
mj-sterious (?) epidemic. If they had thought to cut holes in the ice at intervals
throughout the winter this great waste of fish food might have been prevented.

It is this constant drain upon the fish supply at all seasons of the year, in and
out of spawning time, which excites a well-founded apprehension that it will soon
give out, especially in Lakes Erie and Michigan, where the shores are favorable for
fishing and the fishing stations numerous.

As in the great lakes, so in the rivers and creeks, the small lakes and ponds,
fish will be found where the conditions already specified are the most favorable.

Black bass spawn in May, seeking some retired spot in shallow water where they
scoop out nests in the sand and gravel, and glue their ova to pebbles on the bottom,
standing guard meanwhile near the deposit to keep off predatory intruders. It is
this fidelity which makes the black bass so prolific. Other fish usually lose 95 per
cent of their spawn. After ten days or so the young fry hatch out and scatter into
deep water, where they are comparatively safe from predatory fish. This is a
masterly precaution. Most fish fry keep near the shore, and thereby fall a prey
to skulking pickerel, perch and sunfish. Bass are not the spawn destroyers which
some suppose them to be. They are omnivorous and content themselves with
larvae, beetles, crayfish, water fleas and helgramites, varying their diet with occa-
sional meals of fish — but not always on Fridays.

From June to August the best fishing places are in deep pools of rivers or under
the shadows of dams and falls. From the middle of September to the end of October
they seem to resort more to the deep currents of the midstream. In lakes they lie
under the brush of fallen trees or along the edge of lily pads which line the shore,
and near submerged points of rock. Very often they are found near sunken ledges
of rock in the middle of the lake. They take the fly, grub, minnow or trolling spoon.

Trout are well scattered during May and June, both in lake and river. In
streams and rivers they are most surely caught wher« the current is obstructed by
boulders. Later in the summer they are found in deep holes where there are cold
bottom springs, and by September they seek their spawning beds. They take fly,
grub, worm and minnow.

It is pretty hard to tell a novice where to find trout. An expert angler will lose
no time in testing doubtful or impracticable places, but seems to know the correct
spots by an intuitive perception. In May or June, if he discovers a clump of over-
hanging bushes such as certain ephemera would use to deposit their eggs on. he
will be apt to cast his line there, knowing that the pupa cases are ripe and liberat-
ing the flies, and that there the trout will congregate to feed. If he detects a
stream trickling down the bank, carrying the landwash from the muck and rotten
leaves above, he will put in his hook there, because a good supply of larvae and

"FYSSHE AND FYSSHEYNGE." 117

vegetable food will float in with the debris. Thus he puts some trifling knowledge
of natural history to good practical uses. Indeed, without such knowledge no one
can be a first-clgss angler.

Angling books and tackle dealers are apt to lay great stress upon the importance
of selecting particular flies for the different months or for the different parts of
the day and the varying moods of weather. A very thin stratum of logic tmderlies
this theory, based simply upon the fact that certain species of flies hatch out at
different times; to which may be added the reasonable and evident truth that bright
flies are best on dark days and neutral tints in sunlight. As a rule, trout will take
almost any kind of artificial fly except when some certam variety of natural fly is
prevalent, and then they will take only a correct imitation.

My own stock of flies is always large, but is seldom drawn on, except for a
few certain sizes adaDted to the season and weather. I don't go so much into the
nice perception of varieties as books would have us infer that expert anglers and
wise trout do. Nevertheless it is necessary that dealers. and makers should have an
infinite assortment of devices and combinations of colors and materials with fanc>
names; and any ansler of notorietv who is not an adept in the vernacular, and
wise in supposed occult mysteries of the art, is in danger of being voted an igno-
ramus and a pretender.

Trout accustom themselves to a particular kind of food ; and then they will
take no other. This has been ascertained by fish culturists. They can be taught
to confine themselves to an exclusive diet of liver, maggots, curds or fish.

On the north shore of Lake Superior, where the shores are rocky and pre-
cipitous and the water very deep, they can scarcely be caught with any bait but
minnow, because they get no other food there. Still, they do not altogether lose
their natural instinct to pursue any moving object, and sometimes fasten to a fly.

CHAPTER XXIV.

"fysshe axd fyssheyxge" (concluded).

[Before the Minnesota Academy of Sciences, 1881.]

To enumerate the habits of the long list of so-called game fishes and describe
their habitat and the different modes of capturing them would occupy a large volume.
Such a book I published not long ago, after two years of laborious preparation. It
is called the "Sportsman's Gazetteer," and embraces upward of 900 pages of print.

I have already spoken of the antiquity of angling. Professor J. J. Manley, of
London, has collected sundry Biblical references to its early history. Job says :
"Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook, or his tongue with a cord which thou
lettest down? Canst thou put a hook in his nose, or bore his jaw through with
a thorn?"

From this brief passage it would appear that only hand lines or drop lines were
in use in Job's period. I assume that rods were then not known. The hooks were
made of wood, and quite probably of literal thorns. Even in the present day the
Indians of Arizona and California use for hooks the thorns of a species of cactus,
which are very tough and bent to proper shape by natural growth. The points are
very sharp, and I should much prefer them to many of the inferior modern hooks,
which are poor quality and badly tempered. All aboriginal hooks are made of wood
or bone and are without barbs. The Japanese use barbless hooks, and it is worthy
of remark that many modern anglers advocate the primitive pattern. Seth Green
will not use hooks with barbs.

In the books of Habakkuk we read of fish being taken with an "angle." Isaiah
speaks of those who "cast their hooks into the river," indicating evidently that rods
tvere then used.

Angling with rod and line, and with the hand line alone, were practiced and
well understood early in the Christian era. In the New Testament we read of
Peter taking a fish with a hook; and furthermore it had a piece of silver money in
its mouth ! However, there was nothing strange about that. We read every season
of fishes being caught with miscellaneous collections in their pockets sufficient to
stock a small museum. The accidental dropping into the water of a silver coin
and its pursuit by a fish which darted after it led to the invention of the spoon
hook or troll.

It does not appear that reels were in use in the early centuries. The reel is
an invaluable adjunct to facilitate the capture of big fish; and to take in a fift}--
pound anthia from Lake Tiberius or the classic streams of ancient Greece without
one must have required the skill of an expert worthy to chalk his name high up
beside those of the most illustrious anglers of modern times.

Here is a graphic description of fishing with a rod, written by the poet Oppian
in the second century. I find it in Manley's book. It would do justice to anything
written since, and proves that the poet understood the art of angling thoroughly.
It makes one feel that the fishermen of old were of the same stuff as brothers of

the angle now :

(118)

"FYSSHE AND FYSSHEYNGE." 119

"A bite! Hurrah! the lengthening line extends! He mounts, he bends, and with resilient leap,

Abo\'c the tugging fish the arched reel bends! Bounds into air! There see the dangler twirl,

He struggles hard, and noble sport will yield Convulsive start, hang, curl, again uncurl.

My liege, ere wearied out, he quits the field. Labor once more, like young Terpsichore

See how he swims, up — down — and now athwart In giddy gyres above the sounding sea,

The rapid stream — now pausing as in thought; Till neared, you seize the prize with steady wrist,

And now you force him from the azure deep; And grasp at last the bright funambulist."

"Funambulist" is a good word.

The writer evidently understood the risk of losing a fish when reaching out the
hand to take him in. There never was a hooked fish so nearly spent that he did
not shrink or start from the hand thrust toward him — showing that he was not only
on the alert, even at the point of exhaustion, but that he was suspicious and appre-
hended the fisherman's motive.

I can conceive of no better proof that fish have mental organization or instinct
equal to animals of apparently higher order.

Do fish think? Do fish reason?

Undoubtedly they do. They have their plans and method, and lay out their
schemes to capture their prey ; to outwit man ; to circumvent each other : to avoid
or avert danger by precaution or flight ; to remember and avenge wrongs. Endeavors
are almost always made by some kinds of fish to bite the angler after they are
caught. The gapings of the jaws are not merely convulsive gasps and nervous
spasms of the death throes. I have watched the features of a pike and seen the
malignity and malice in his eye — a genuine malice prepense. A monster muscalonge
alive in the bottom of a boat is almost as dangerous as an alligator of size would
be. Therefore anglers shoot them through the head with a pistol, or stun them
with a club, or sever the vertebral cord with a pointed knife, before they lift them
in. Sword fish, which have been struck with a harpoon, often attack the boat which
has inflicted the injury. The salt water bluefish (temnodon Saltator) is one of the
most aggressive biters I know of. There is no doubt that their efforts to bite are
often prompted by an instinct of reprisal. They are evidences of mental organism.

I have never seen one of the salmonidae attempt to bite, although their nervous
gasps are good imitations of his intention. I should as soon expect to be bitten by
a calf as by a trout.

There are different dispositions in fishes as well as in animals, we all know.
Indeed, the ferocity and unrelenting pertinacy of some marine species far exceeds
those traits in any known land animal extant.

Yet I will say this for a trout, that notwithstanding his meek and gentle dis-
position, he will hold his own against big odds.

In the aquarium of Messenger Bros., in Boston, were placed an equal number
of trout and black bass, perhaps a dozen of each, graded to even sizes and weights —
from a pound fish to a fingerling. At the close of the "circus" two of each remained
— the two biggest trout and the two biggest bass. These did not fight any more,
nor attempt reprisals. The entente cordiale seemed perfect. Their complete resig-
nation to the conviction that neither was able to swallow the other was beautiful
to contemplate. In the tussle the bass had great odds, because they were armed
with scale armor, spiny fins and strong teeth, while trout had only velvet doublets,
no scales to speak of and delicate teeth. How a trout can swallow a bass half his
size seems an enigma.

To grasp a big fish, even when he is quite exhausted by protracted exertions
to escape, requires nerve and dexterity. You must seize him by the nape of the
neck, and, with the thumb and finger firmly fixed behind the gill covers, lift him
out of his element.

120 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

To obviate his possible escape under any circumstances, anglers employ a land-
ing net. This is a scoop net with a handle. It must be slipped slyly under the fish,
so that he will not suspect, and then be deliberately lifted upward and forward.
This maneuver requires practice. Many an impetuous bungler loses a goodly fish
which the angkr has earned or brought to net or gaff by consummate skill and
dexterous toil.

The gaff is a large hook, some three inches across the bend, fixed into a handle
from three to five feet long. It is used in the capture of salmon and muscalonge,
for striped bass on the sea coast, and, indeed, for any large fish whose weight the
line cannot lift. The fisherman is usually served by an assistant who gaffs or. nets
his fish after they are played out and brought to hand. ("Played out" is supposed
to be 3. slang phrase, but this is the origin of it.)

It is worthy of mention that a fish on a taut line always keeps his eyes fixed
on the angler, and watches his motions steadily, like a prize fighter ; yet it is possible
to slip a gaff or net under him without his observing it.

Referring to the instincts of fish, I have been very much in the migrations of
the fish in the tributary streams of the Red River of the North. They comprise
several distinct families of fish — pike, perch, pickerel, sheepsheads, moon-eyes, cat-
fish and suckers — and yet they all move out of the streams together on the advent
of frost, knowing full well that the streams freeze to the bottom, and that they
would be imprisoned all winter in an icy coffin, if indeed they did not actually perish.

Many fish, however, enjoy a temporary suspension of vitality; and, after having
been frozen up solid in blocks of ice. are as active as ever when thawed out.

Some kinds of fish possess the power of voluntary torpidity and remain appar-
ently lifeless all winter. A very large number of families hybernate — just as bears,
coons and various animals do — notably catfish, eels. etc. It is said that black bass
hybernate.

Oppian, already quoted, also describes fishing from a boat, a very effective and
popular method, as well as a comfortable and exciting sport. It is almost the only
certain way of capturing large fish. He puts it thus :

"The fisher, standinp from the shallop's head.
Projects the lengthening line and plunging lead;
Gently retracts, then draws it in apace.
While flocking anthias follow and give chase.

"As men their foe, so these pursue their fate.
And closely press the still receding bait.
Xor long in vain the tempting morsel pleads,
A hungry anthia seizes, snaps and bleeds;
The fraud soon felt. — he flies in wild dismay.
Whizz goes the line — begins Piscator's play!
His muscles tense, each tendon on the rack
Of swelling limbs, broad loins, and sinewy back.
Mark yon proud form, erect with rigid brow,
Like stately statue sculptured at the prow;
From wavy hand who pays the loosening rein,
Maneuvering holds, or lets run again!
.•\nd see! the anthia not a moment flags;
Resists each pull, and 'gainst the dragger drags;
With lashing tail, to darkest depths below
Shoots headlong down, in hopes to evade the foe.
'Now ply your oars, my lads,' Piscator bawls:
The huge fish plunges — down Piscator falls,
A second plunge, and lo! the ensangued twine
Flies through his fissured fingers to the brine.

"FYSStlE AND FYSSHEYNGE." 121

"As two strong combatants, of balanced might
Force first esay, then practice every sleight.
So these contend, a while a well matched pair —
Till frantic efforts by degrees impair
The anthia's strength, who, drained of vital blood.
Soon staggers feebly thro' the foaming fiood,
Then dying, turns his vast, unwieldy bulk
Reversed upon the waves, a floating hulk.

"Towed to his side, with joy Piscator sees
The still leviathan. Still on his knees.
With arms outstretched, close clasps the gurgling throat.
Make one long pull, and hauls him in the boat."

There is a true piscatorial ring about Oppian's epic, but the ancient tackle was
evidently of rude construction. His fishermen used a simple handline. with a squid
or jug for bait. A squid is a piece of lead some three inches long, fashioned in the
shape of a fish and attached to a hook. It is polished bright and glitters when drawn
through the water. They are in use at the present day and not much improved
upon th€ old patterns.

The ancient fisherman kept his squid in motion until a fish struck it, and then
handled his captive after a fashion which would not much enjoy the "ensanguined
twine" cutting the fingers to the bone. One capture would be likely to suffice, and
they would not be apt to come across another "first-rate day of fishing" for some
time. To obviate such distresses the modern angler uses a rod and reel, as well
as a rubber thumb-stall or a thick woolen mitten to protect his hand. I have seen
a muscalonge or a striped bass make such a swift and impetuous rush that the line
would have cut the fingers clean off if it had been held in the hand. I have seen a
salmon-reel so hot from friction that the hand could not bear the heat.

Jointed rods were not known to the ancients, though the present day really
the best wooden rods are in one piece. Ferrules being less pliable than wood, impair
the flexibility which should be distributed uniformly throughout the length of the
rod. The advantage of sectional rods is that they are more portable, though in the
cases of the split bamboo, the most artistic and effective rod made, the advantage
of strength and flexibility are added from the very nature and plan of their con-
struction. A split bamboo is ten-fold stronger and more pliable than the natural
bamboo of which it is made. Calcutta bamboo is the best. The male canes only
are used. They have less shoots.

The chief and primary object in fishing is to catch fish — to secure the object
fished for. Therefore it would seem at first sight that the biggest rod, the thickest
line and the strongest hook fulfill the condition of success. The first impulse is
to lift the fish bodily out of the water by main strength and run no risk by fooling
with him. The first remark made of fly-rod by a tyro is that it won't hold any-
thing. This is true. Its uses are altogether different. The fact is one cannot catch
any but the grossest and most stupid fish with clumsy tackle. Anglers don't fish
in tanks with tame fish. Wild fish are shy, so the rod is made light and flexible
to reach distant localities with a long line. It is rigged so as lo fish the surface
where groveling fish never come. Gross fish, like dregs, hug the bottom. The finer
variety feed near the top. It is because no single rod can do good, all-around
service that trunk rods and combination rods are rejected by expert anglers, just
as guns of different caliber, size and weight of ammunition are essential for dif-
ferent kinds of game.

The passion for angling is so strong that ardent anglers get to iove the most
repulsive creatures from their very association. They will impale bettles, thread

122 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

worms, fondle maggots and grubs, and manipulate all kinds of crawling, long-
legged things without a qualm or shudder. Even ladies will do this with a keen
zest. They enjoy the preparation of the seductive lures which are the accessories
to the practice of the high art and are to add to their list of ichthyic trophies. Some
of the fish culturists have maggot factories, to manufacture the daily food supply
for their schools of fish. If people who buy home-made trout in the market at $1
per pound only knew how some of them were bred and fed, they would hardly esteem
them the delicacy they do. For myself, I don't stomach artificially raised trout of
any kind.

Some of the best anglers in the two hemispheres are ladies — many of them of
highest rank. Queen Victoria's daughter, the Princess Louise, and Lady DufFerin,
wife of the late popular Governor General of Canada, have no superiors of either
sex. Daniel Webster's wife was the most complete angler ; so is the wife of one
of the leading officials of the Hayes administration. The R^v. W. H. H. Murray's
wife, of Adirondack fame, is even a better angler than himself. Miss Sarah Mc-
Bride, of Mumford, N. Y., is a most accomplished entomologist, as well as a prac-
tical angler. Indeed, the number of good lady anglers is greater than is supposed.

Lady Dufferin, on the river Restigouche, in New Brunswick, Canada, once
struck a salmon at four o'clock in the afternoon, and himg to him until it was so
dark that she couldn't see ; but her gaflfer finally gathered him in. There was pluck
and endurance ! The fish weighed twentj-eight pounds.

"When I was a boy I used to carry worms in the toe of an old shoe in my vest
pocket. I have often held worms between my lips for convenience when both hands
were prooccupied. They had scoured themselves thof-oughly in the dry sand and
were nice and clean, red and plump, but squirmy. I never went so far as to make
a bait box out of my mouth, like Nigger Sam.

Sam had a basket and pole over his shoulder, and was striking out for the creek,
evidently going a-fishing.

"Hallo, Sam !" said a gentleman he chanced to meet. "What are you going to
catch this time?"

"Yum — yum— yum — yum."

"Anything the matter? What have you got in your mouth?"

"Wums, for bait."

Some of the fishing outfits of the United States and Canada are extensive, ex-
pensive and complete, a few almost princely in their appointments. Allan Gilmour,
Esq., of Ottowa, Canada, doubtless has the finest angling establishment in the world,
which is maintained at an annual cost of $25,000. His fishing privilege on the God-
bout river includes 5,000 acres of forest and several miles of water; the station is
a considerable hamlet of itself, arranged for every convenience and luxury; a beau-
tiful steam yacht and steam tender are included in the outfit. Representatives of
royalty are frequent guests at this establishment.

Willis Russell, an American resident of Quebec, has six cottages on the River
Marguerite, which are comfortably appointed for salmon anglers.

Col. William H. Rhodes, of Quebec, and William Hare Powell, of Philadelphia,
have luxurious establishments at Tadousac, on the lower St. Lawrence.

C. J. Brydges, of the Grand Trunk Railroad, has a luxuriously appointed scow
on the Restigouche, with gallery, dining hall, state rooms, promenade deck, etc. It
is drawn up stream by horses and is named "Great Caesar's Ghost." The Princess
Louise and Lady Dufferin have both honored this quaint craft with their patronage.

"FYSSHE AND FYSSHEYNGE."

123

On the same river is a club of American gentlemen, who pay $1,000 a year
each for their fishing privilege.

Most of the Canadian salmon rivers are leased at |200 and upward, the lessees
all having expensive quarters and outfits.

"Fysshe and Fyssheynge'' have their quaint and humorous features. I doubt
if any avocation or pastime has more of them. One of the most grotesque conceits
in angling literature is the poem entitled "The Skeleton Angler." It will do very
well for "last words" to this paper. The author of the verses was a London tackle
dealer, and the effusion appeared originally as an advertisement of his goods. It
is really a remarkable piece of fanciful imagination. I have copied it from Manley's
clever book. It runs thus :

"When the clock in yon gray tower
Proclaims the deep, still, midnight hour,
And ominous birds are on the wing,
I rise from the realms of the Bony King.

"My bonny elm coffin I shoulder, and take
To fish in the blood red phantom lake,
Where many a brace of spectral trout
Forever frisk, dart and frolic about.

"Then the hyena's ravening voice
Gladdens and makes my heart rejoice!

"The glow worm and the deaths-head moth
Are killing baits on the crimson froth.

"For work bench I've the sculptpred tomb.
Where tackled form by the silent moon;
Of churchyard yew my rods I make;
Worms from the putrid corpse I take;

Lines I plait from the golden hair
Plucked from the head of a damsel fair;
Floats of the mournful cypress tree
I carve, while night winds whistle free.

"My plummets are moulded of coffin lead;
For paste I seize the parish bread.
The screech-owl's or the raven's wing
For making flies are just the thing!

"Should thunder roll from the barren shore,
I bob for eels in the crimson gore,
A human skull is my live-bait can,
My ground-bait the crumbling bone of man,
My lusty old coffin for punt I'll take.
To angle by night in the phantom lake.

'While Dante's winged demons are hovering o'er
The skeleton trout of the crimson gore.
To the blood-red phantom lake I go.
While vampyre bats flit to and fro."

Afterward follows an epigram : Scene, sunrise. — All the phantoms and obscene
creatures out of sight in their little beds, and the author of the verses cheerfully
at work in his shop at Hungerford market, where all good fishermen are respect-
fully invited to call.

The pathos is really too shocking to inflict upon an imagination wrought up to
the supreme pitch, and therefore I spare my readers the collapse which a perusal
of the lines would be sure to entail.

CHAPTER XX\'.

PROGRESSIVE FISH CULTURE.

The entire number of fishes inhabiting the waters of the United States is some-
thing over 1,400. More than 300 of these have a recognized economic value.

The first attempt at artificial fish culture in the United States was made by Dr.
Theodatus Garlick in 1851.

Massachusetts established the first board of fish commissioners in 18o6, to con-
sider the practicabilitj' of artificial propagation.

The era of practical fish culture was inaugurated in 1864. by Mr. Seth Green.

New Hampshire appropriated the first public money for fish cultural purposes
in 1865. Massachusetts organized the first state fish commission in 1866.

The United States Fish Commission was established in 1871.
The American Fish Cultural Association was established in the same year.

Fish hatching was first publicly shown at Coup's Aquarium by Fred Mather
in 1875.

The first exhibition of fishing appliances was made by the Smithsonian Institu-
tion at Philadelphia in 1876.

Carp were introduced in 1877, and since then have been planted in 20,000 locali-
ties in different parts of the country.

Floating hatcheries were introduced in 1877.
The propagation of marine fishes was first undertaken in 1878.

In 1880 the grand prize of the International Fisheries Exhibition at Berlin was
awarded to Prof. Baird as "the first fish culturist in the world."

The steamer Fish Hawk was built for the U. S. Fish Commission in 1880.

The steamer Albatross was put in commission in 1883.

Thirty states and territories now have fish commissions.

The total amount of public appropriations by the United States and the several
state commissions up to the present year has been fully $2,500,000.

The weight of edible fish taken from the waters of the United States is two
thousand million pounds annually, or about forty pounds to each inhabitant.

The value of the annual fish product is $45,000,000.

The number of persons dependent on the fisheries is one million.

About 12 per cent of the whole number of fishermen are foreign-born.

The principal commercial fish products are: Oysters, cod, salmon, whales, men-
haden, fur seals, mackerel, shad, alewives, herring, sardines, clams and quahogs,
whitefish, lobsters, sea otters, halibut, crabs, haddock, sturgeon, mullet, shrimp and
prawns, eels, sponges, abelones, seals and sea elephants, hake, scallops, red snappers
and groupers, smelt, turtle and terrapin, mussels, flounders, swordfish, sea weed,
sea salt and Irish moss.

In the days of the early beginning a few varieties of fresh water and anad-
romous fishes were hatched in rude hatching troughs in small hatching houses, with
primitive waterworks of insufficient volume, by Lyman, Green, Ainsworth, Slack,
Stone, Atkins, Brackett, Mather and a few others, but in 1877 the United States
Fishery Commission practically took the whole matter of fish culture under its
charge as a national enterprise. While it eagerly availed itself of all the knowledge

C124)

FRED MATHER,

ANGLER, AUTHOR, FISH CULTURIST.

PROGRESSIVE FISH CULTURE. 125

which had already been acquired on the subject, it at once undertook to devise im-
proved methods and appliances to expedite the work and extend its scope. Within
the interval marvelous apparatus in astonishing variety has been invented; and each
new experience gained has enabled it to improve upon the old styles of boxes and
troughs, or necessitated the invention of new devices adapted to special requirements.
For instance, heavy eggs, like those of salmon and trout, require one kind of hatch-
ing apparatus and a particular mode of treatment; semi-buoyant eggs, like those
of whitefish and shad, another kind; adhesive eggs, like those of smelt, herring and
perch, another ; floating eggs, including those df cod, Spanish mackerel and moon-
fish, a kind so arranged as to utilize the action of the waves.

Methods of fish culture have advanced equally with devices and apparatus. The
most important of these is the building of movable floating hatcheries in the form
of barges, and steamers like the Fish Hawk and Albatross, the last named being
1,000 tons burthen, and both fitted with every known convenience and appliance.
By means of these steamers the results of the work are enormously increased, with
a comparatively small increase of cost, for instead of the hatcheries being stationary,
and operating at only one point, they may be moved from place to place, following
the migrations of the fish, as the season advances. Steam is a most important
auxiliary, too, for pumping water and working the various kinds of apparatus.

With regard to transportation, immense quantities of fish and eggs are dis-
tributed by means of refrigerator cars built expressly for the purpose, whereas they
were formerly carried in small quantities in the baggage cars of ordinary passenger
trains.

Up to the present time thirty principal species have been artificially hatched.
These comprise the following: Brook trout, whitefish, lake trout, pike-perch, At-
lantic salmon, shad, California salmon, striped bass, land-locked salmon, Oquassa
trout, sea bass, grayling, sturgeon, smelt, herring, alewife, oyster, cod, haddock,
carp, Spanish mackerel, cero, moonfish, silver gar, gold fish, tench, mountain trout
(S. irridea) and soft-shell clams.

There were thirteen principal hatching stations operated by the United States
Fish Commission in 1883, to wit : Grand Lake Stream and Bucksport, Maine ; Wood's
Holl, Mass. ; Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York ; Havre de Grace, Mary-
land ; Washington. D. C. ; Wytheville, Va. ; Point Lookout, Md. ; Avoca, N. C. ;
Northville and Alpena, Mich.; Baird, Cal., and Clackamas, Ore.

Since the year 1877 the entire North Atlantic Coast from Florida to Nova
Scotia has been made the seat of the most active operations in marine research.
Temporary laboratories are set up along the coast wherever required, and the busi-
ness of dredging, seining, collecting, classifying and preparing museum specimens
is prosecuted with the utmost vigor. There is a permanent headquarters at Wood's
Holl, in Massachusetts, where, in addition to. other scientific work, the propagation
of sea fishes is carried on extensively, and there are also stations of observation and
labor in ever\- important position of the coast and interior waters, where the breed-
ing times and habits and the embryology of a great variety of fishes are studied, as
well as special problems of temperature of water, movements of fishes, causes of
mortality, the varieties of food, and the nutritive value of fishes, etc.

But not only does the U. S. Fish Commission undertake this multifarious work
through its own designated agents, experts and assistants, but it impresses into its
service the whole fishing fleets of the North Atlantic, the signal oflSces of the army,
the lighthouse keepers and lightships, the life saving and signal stations along shore ;
and it stimulates their exertions and their interest by public praise and by printing

126 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

their discoveries. A great many fishing vessels carry collecting tanks. In this
manner some 60,0€0 specimens have been obtained and over thirty species of fishes
have been added to the known fauna of North America.

All these facts and many more were contributed by Prof. R. Edward Earll to
the data which Prof. G. B. Goode submitted in his address before the International
Fisheries Conference at London, in 1883, and which have recently been printed.
They show not only the tremendous scope of the work in hand, but the large discre-
tionary power which the commissioner enjoys as one of the pet factors of the
government. One of its duties is to suggest to Congress any protective, precau-
tionary or prohibitory measures necessary for the rehabilitation of the waters of
the United States. It has been so instructed. Now the commission has promised
the people an abundance of fish, so that all may eat and be filled. It has promised
them fish without legislation ; and while it does not aflfect to despise state legislative
enactments as indirect aids to protection and propagation, it forbears to introduce
the law into the hatching box. It declares, in effect, that hereafter fish shall be so
plentiful that protective laws will be superfluous and that anglers shall enjoy the
privilege of fishing without paying for it. Such a consummation will remove all
disputes about riparian rights and take the gilt edge off from the eclat which at-
taches to club membership. In the halcyon days of that coming anglers' millennium
trespass notices will not be any more required for private trout waters than they
are for hen-roosts. The occupation of the big bulldog will perish, and the last
exacerbated trousers-seat will be hung up in the National Museum as a memento
of the dampness which once hung around a fisherman's luck.

Note. — The foregoing chapter was written in May, 1885. — Editor.

G. BROWN GOODE.

FISH CULTURIST AND AUTHOR.

CHAPTER XXVL

RECORD OF LIFE WORK FOR FIFTY-EIGHT YEARS.

1852-0 — Compositor and reporter, New York Journal of Commerce.
1853-6 — Contributor to many sketch and story papers.
1855-6 — Assistant editor New Haven Register.

1856 — Senate reporter, Connecticut Legislature, O. H. Piatt, clerk
1856-61 — Associate editor New York Journal of Commerce.

1857 — The Siege of Ft. Atkinson. Experiences en the plains. (See Harper's

Magazine, October, 1857.)
1858 — Visited Red River of the North (Harper's Magazine), April and May,

1858.)

July, steamboat War Eagle, from St. Paul (4:30 p. m.) to Prairie du

Chien (9.15 a. m.).

Via first railroad from Prairie du Chien to Chicago opened.
1859 — Opened the Aroostook to agriculture. (Journal of Commerce.)

(Harper's Monthly.) Visits to Madawaska. Life among the loggers.
1860 — First photos of interior Labrador. (Harper's Magazine.)
1861 — Sea Islands of Georgia (Harper's Magazine.)
1862 — Correspondent Morning Journal, Halifax, N. S.
186i3 — Assistant editor Chronicle and Sentinel, Augusta, Ga.

Temporary Editor Royal Gazette, Bermuda-
Worked up resources of Maritime Provinces for the St. John Telegraph,

and Halifax Citizen.
1664— Assistant editor Telegraph, St. John, N. B.
1864-5 — Chief editor Courier, St. John, N. B. (Confederation organ.)
1865— Editor Humorist, St. John, N. B.
1864-66 — Broker and commission merchant at Halifax and St. John. (Firm of

Wilkinson, Wood & Co., and Hallock, Schroeder & Co.)
1867— Broker, 59 Beaver, New York. (Ralph King & Hallock.)

Oyster Point town site, in New Haevn, laid out estate in streets and lots.
1868 — Financial editor Harper's Weekly.

The Restigouche, Bay Chaleur. (Harper's Magazine, December, 1868.)
1860 — Worked up the Adirondacks. (Harper's Magazine.)
1870-71 — Founded Blooming Grove Park, Pa., with Fayette S. Giles.

The first game preserve in the United States.

Sheldon Wood Preserving Co., creosoted wood pavement.

Electric boiler cleaner. Catalyzed paper. (Sunk a lot of money in these

ventures.)
1872 — Chatham, Nova Scotia, for salmon and canned lobsters.

Prospected north shore of Lake Superior for mineral.
1873 — Wrote "The Fishing Tourist."

Founded Forest and Stream.

Director Flushing and Queens County Bank, L. I.
1874 — Founded International Association for Protection of Game.

(■127)

12S AX ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

1874-6 — Opened Lake Okechobee and Florida sugar planters to tourists, with
Fred. A. Ober, naturalist and historian.
1875 — Among the buffalo in the Indian Territory.
1876 — Published "Camp Life in Florida." (350 pp.)

Sportsmen's exhibit at Philadelphia Centennial. (Hunters' Camp.) Medal
1877 — Wrote "The Sportsman's Gazetteer" (900 pp.)

1878 — WorKed up moonshiners in Tennessee and North Carolina for New York
Herald, with Major Wagner's mounted revenue police.
Worked up Northern Michigan for G. R. & Indiana Railroad.
1879 — Founded town of Hallock, in Kittson County, Minn.
1880 — Published "Dog Fanciers' Directory and Medical Guide."

Built Hotel Hallock, at Hallock, Minn., and exploited town site; now a
thriving county seat.
1880 — Donated $5,000 collection to Long Island Historical Society.
1881 — Offered to Chicago the first smoke consumer and garbage burner. (My
own invention.) Introduced steam gauge for boilers. Handled combina-
tion standpipe and fire escape.

Worked up Northern Pacific Railroad west to the Rockies.
Life in Montana and Idaho.
188'2 — Worked up Canadian Pacific west to Regina and Moose Jaw.

Winter research in Texas, Arkansas and Missouri.
1883 — Sunflower culture for its oil product in Northern Minnesota.
1884 — Successful culture in Minnesota of sunflowers for the oil product. (See
U. S. Agricultural Dept.)

South Carolina, Etowah, phosphates near Charleston.
Tried to introduce automatic garbage consumer.
Etowah phosphates. South Carolina rivers.
i864'-5 — Superintendent Minnesota Frontier Exhibit at New Orleans Fair.
1885 — Reported Manitoba Riel Rebellion for New Orleans Times-Democrat.
Exploited chemical coal economizer on steamers and tug boats.
1886-92 — Worked up Massachusetts' abandoned farms.
1885-6 — Visited Alaska and wrote "Our New Alaska."
1887-8 — Prospected for phosphates and marble in Ontario, Canada.
1889-00 — Worked up Montana mineral district for Great Northern Railroad.
Wrote up Yellowstone Park for Chicago Field.
1890 — Wrote "The Salmon Fisher," edited Nature's Realm ten months.
1891 — Introduced through Senator McMillan bill to establish Industrial Indian
School in Pipestone, Minn., southwest corner.
1888-90 — Worked up resources of Virginia and Eastern North Carolina. (Tide-
waters.)
1892 — Worked up British Columbia for Great Northern Railroad. (Lethbridge
to Spokane.)
1893-7 — Basket willow culture in North Carolina.
ISM^G — Business agency and truck farm at Newbern, N. C.
1895-7 — Director State Dairy Association of North Carolina.
1896-7— Edited Western Field and Stream, St. Paul, Minn.

189f7 — Formulated a code of uniform game laws, which has been officially
indorsed by the U. S. Biological Survey.
Life in Mississippi, Tennessee and Alabama.

RECORD OF LIFE WORK FOR FIFTY-EIGHT YEARS. 129

1898-99 — Mining broker in St. Louis, Mo.

Life in Mississippi, Tennessee and Alabama.
1000 — Worked up Mobile (Ala.) industries for Chamber of Commerce.
1001-03— Truck farming at Newbern, N. C.

1904 — Half century class record (1854) Amherst.
1905 — Natural history of Southern California.

Built studio at National City.
1906 — "Luminous Bodies." Metaphysical Pub. Co., New York.
1907— "Hallock Ancestry."

Resources of Eastern Long Island, N. Y.
Jamestown Exposition, at Norfolk, Va.
1908— "Peerless Alaska."

Eastern Long Island geophysics and natural history.
1909 — Engaged in literary work.
1910-11 — Cosmogony for Harper, Antiquarian and Metaphysical Magazine.

Active or honorary member of fifty-seven scientific, literary and game protective
societies. Member of D. K. E. Fraternity. Member of the Masonic Fraternity
since 1857. ^Member of the Grange. Have done continuous work for Smithsonian
since 1660. Have visited nearly every geographical division of North America,
from ice to tropics. Have cruised the entire Atlantic coast up to Greenland and
one-half of the Pacific coast. Have run the blockade by land and sea. Contributed
to Harper's IMagazine off and on from 1857 to 1900. Have contributed to scores
of magazines and papers. Correspondent for Evening Post from 1868 to 1890.
Was stockholder of Journal of Commerce from 1855 to 1879. F"itted Ober Expe-
dition to Florida in 1874 and to West Indies in 1876. Am author of fifteen copy-
righted works. Member of National Geographical Society and Biological Society,
Washigton, D. C.

Attest: Charles Hallock. August 1, 1900.

Charles Hallock's Club Memberships.
(Active, Associate and Honorary.)
Honorary — Alaska Historical Society, Sitka.
Active — American Forestry Association, Minnesota.

" American Tract Society, New York.

" American Ornithological Union, Boston.

" American Forestry Association, Washington, D. C.

" Ancient Landmark, St. Paul, Minn.

Honorary — Anglers' Club, New York.
Active — Anglers' National Association.

" Art Collectors' Club, Philadelphia.

Honorary — Ausable River Game and Fish Protective Society, New York.

" Beaver River Club, Springfield, Mass.

Active — Biological Society, Washington, D. C.

" Blooming Grove Hunt Club, Pike County, Pa.

Brooklyn Club. (1870-71.)
Honorary — Brooklyn Gun Club.
Active -Canadian Camp. (1905-9.)
Honorary — Central City Sportsmen's Club, Syracuse, N. Y.

Central New Jersey Game and Fish Protective Society.

130 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

Active — Cosmos Club, Washington, D. C.

" D. K. E. Alumni Association, New York.

" D. K. E. Alumni Association, Washington, D. C.

Honorary — Eagle Piscatory Club, Eagle City, Alaska.
Active —Faust Club. Brooklyn, N. Y. (1870.)
Honorary — Forest and Stream Sp. Club, Brainerd, Minn.

" Forest City Gun Club, Portland, Me.

" Forest City Gun Club, Ithaca, N. Y.

'■ Gaillard Sportsmen's Club, Natchez, Miss.

Active — National Geographical Society, Washington, D. C.

" Greenwood Lake Club, Montclair, N. J.

Honorary — Greenville Sportsmen's Club, Greenville, Pa.
Gulf City Gun Club, Mobile, Ala.

" Hallock Sportsmen's Club, Glens Falls, N. Y.

" Hallock Sportsmen's Club, New Smyrna, Fla.

" Hallock Sportsmen's Club, Chicago, 111.

" Haydenville Club, Haydenville, Mass.

" Jersey City Heights Gun Club.

" Kennebec Association, P. G. and F., Augusta, Me.

Active — Long Island Historical Society, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Honorary — London (Can.) D. G. F. and G. B. P. S.

'■ Longmeadow Gun Club, Minneapolis, Minn.

" Louisville Gun Club, Louisville, Ky.

" Massachusetts Fish and Game Protective Association.

" Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul.

" Minnesota Academy of Sciences, Minneapolis.

" Multnomah Rod and Gun Club, Portland, Ore.

Active — New England Grenfell Association, Boston, Mass.

" New York Sportsmen's Club. (1860.)

" New York Association Protection Game and Fish, New York. (18^75.)

Honorary — Philadelphia Sportsmen's Club. (1870.)
Active — Philistines, East Aurora, N. Y.

" Plainfield Grange, Mass.

" Prisoners' Aid Association, Washington, D. C.

Honorary — Rod and Gun Club, Springfield, Mass.
Active —Social Science Association. (1901.)

" Tariff Reform Club, New York.

Thirteen Club, New York.
Honorary — Tuna Club, Santa Catalina, Cal. (1007.)
Summary — Honorary, 29; active, 28; total, 57.

Club Membership in States.

Alaska 2 Minnesota 5

Alabama 1 Mississippi

California 1 Ontario

District of Columbia 6 Oregon

Florida 1 Pennsylvania

Illinois 1 Quebec

Kentucky 1 New Jersey 2

Maine 3 New York 21

Massachusetts 6 —

Total 58

RECORD OF LIFE WORK FOR FIFTY-EIGHT YEARS. 181

Copyrighted Books by Charles Hallock.

1854 — "Recluse of the Oconee," Sunday Atlas. Herrick & Ropes.

1863 — "Sketches of Stonewall Jackson." Chronicle Company, Augusta, Ga.

1873— "Fishing Tourist." Harper Brothers.

1S76 — ^"Camp Life in Florida." Forest and Stream Publishing Company.

1877' — "Sportsmen's Gazetteer." Forest and Stream Publishing Company.

1877^ — "Vacation Rambles in ^lichigan." Grand Rapids & Indiana R. R. Co.

1878— "American Club List and Glossary." Forest and Stream Publishing Co.

1880 — "Dog Fanciers' Directory and Medical Guide." Forest and Stream.

1880— "Rub It Out." Crichton & Co.. New York.

1886 — "Our New Alaska." Forest and Stream.

1890 — "The Salmon Fisher." Harris Publishing Company, New York.

1904 — Half Century Class Record, '54, Amherst, Mass. Carpenter & Morehouse.

1&06 — "Luminous Bodies Here and Hereafter." Metaphysical Pub. Co., New

York.
1906 — "Hallock Ancestry." Carpenter & Morehouse, Amherst, Mass.
1908— "Peerless Alaska."
1O09— "The New Cosmogony." (Not out.)
1909 — "Autobiography of an Old Sportsman." (Not out.)

Magazine Articles by Charles Hallock.

Harper, October, 1857, "Siege of Fort Atkinson ;" April, 18&9, "Red River Trail ;'"
June, 18o9, "Red River Trail;" March, 1860, "Life Among the Loggers;" July,
1860, "Hunting on Green Island;" April, 1861, "Three Months in Labrador;"
May, 1861, "Three Months in Labrador;" October, 1863, "Aroostook and the
Madawaska;" December, 1866, "Secrets of Sable Island."

Stewart's Quarterly, St. John, N. B., 1867, "The Paper of Century."

Harper, March, 1868, "The Restigouche ;" August, 1870, "The Raquette Club."

Galaxy, April, 1870, "Bermuda and the Blockade."

London Field, 1887, "Angling Literature of America."

Goldthwaite, 1891, "Underground Water Courses."

New England Magazine, May, 1891, "Russian Fur Trade."

Goldthwaite Geographical Magazine, 1893, "Physiography of a Pocoson."

Springfield Republican, 1891, "Northwestern Minnesota."

D. K. E. Quarterly, 1893, "Old Times in Achaia."

University Magazine, 18&4, "Metropolitan Workers of the Past Generation."

U, S. Government Report, 1894, "Monograph of the Reindeer."

New England Magazine, 1894, "A Gentleman's Estate ;" 1892, "Bermuda in Blockade
Times."

Railway Age, 1895, "First Railroad Train in Florida."

Southern States Magazine (three papers), 1896, "Old Field Homiletics."

Anthropologist, 1896, "Eskimo's Written Language."

National Geographical Magazine, 1896, "Two Hundred Miles up the Kuskokwim."

Rat Portage Miner, 1897, "Pioneer Discoveries of Gold in Ontario.

Menorah Monthly, 1898, "Biology of the Cosmos.

Indians' Friend, 1900, "Employments for Indians."

Outing, 1900, "Pioneer Sportsmen of America."

Antiquarian, January, 1902, "Ancestors of American Aborigines."

Squire's Catalog, 1902, "Down by the Sea."

132 AX ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

Chubb's Catalog, ISdQ, "Etchings on a Salmon Stream."

Outing, 1902, '"Marine Life on Alaska Coast."

Everybody's Magazine, July, 1902, "Delights of Salmon Angling."

Harper, August, 1902, "Primitive North Americans."

Southern States Magazine, 1804, "Newbern in Bloom."

Wiseman, 1902-3, Electrical Body of Future Life," "Philosophy of Everlasting

Life," "Philosophy of Religion," "The United Philosophies."
Recreation, 1905, "The Minnesota Interlaken."
Maine Sportsman, 1906, "Hunting the Musk Ox."
Sportsmen's Review, 1906, "American Sportsmenship."
Determination, 1907, "Loves of Pocahontas."
Kindergarten Magazine, 1907, "Kindergarten by the Sea."
Field and Stream, 1906, "Vanishing Moonshiner."
Metaphysical Magazine, 1908, "Electricity the Vital Force."
Field and Stream, 1909, "Hunt of Irish Rifle Team."

Essays and Mongraphs.
(Outside of stated newspaper work.)

Halifax, N. S., 1863, "Joel Penman's Observations, or the Provinces through Yankee

Spectacles;" 1864, "Sketches of Stonewall Jackson" (English edition).
New York Herald, 1876, "Still Hunting in North Carolina."
Minneapolis Academy of Science, 1880, "Fauna of Northern Minnesota.''
St. Paul Pioneer Press, 1881, "The Black Canon of Wyoming.
New England Magazine, 1881, "Fysshe and Fyssheynge'' (a lecture).
Chicago Field, January and February, 1882, "The Yellowstone Country" (5 papers) ;

1882, "Red River of the North ;" "Lake of the Woods."
American Field, 1883, "The Turtle Mountain Country."
Brooklyn Eagle, 1883, "Development of Texas."

Pioneer Press, 1883, "The Southwest via Missouri Pacific Railroad" (10 papers).
Chicago Field, 1883, "Chequamagon," "Roseau Lake Breeding Grounds," "Hegira

of the Crows," "Wane of the Aborigines."
Orvis Cheney Volume, 1883, "Etchings on a Salmon Stream."
St. Louis Rural World, 1888, "Sunflower Culture for Its Oil Product."
American Field, 1884, "The Sea Trout."

Chicago Field, 1884, "Domesticated Buffalo," "Bob Blue and His Kinsfolk."
Chicago Field, 1884, "The Story of Oomingnoak" (musk ox).
American Angler, 1885, "Fish Distribution in the Northwest."
Chicago Field, 1885, "The Transcontinental Moose Path," "Buffalo in Texas."
St. Paul Pioneer Press, January to April, 1885, "New Orleans Cotton Exposition."
New Orleans Times-Democrat, April, 1885, "The Riel Rebellion."
New York Sun, 1885, "Home of the Iceberg."
Chicago Field, 1885, "Old Shad Times on the Connecticut."
Forest and Stream, 1886, "Trout of Alaska."
New York Evening Post, 1886, "The Hampshire Hills."
Brooklyn Eagle, 1886, "Turkish Americans."

Washington Biological Society, December 3, 1887, "The Great Roseau Swamp."
Union Signal, January 13, 1887, "Women and Temperance in Alaska."
Washington Biological Society, March 19, 1887, "Transcontinental Range of the

Moose ;" 1887, "Reversion of Domesticated Animals to Wild State."

^

"THE DEAN," UXDER ANXESTRAL TREES, PLAIXFIELD, MASS

RECORD OF LIFE WORK FOR FIFTY-EIGHT YEARS. 133

Magazine of American History, April, 1887, "Making of History in Alaska."

London Field, June, 1887, "Angling Literature of America."

American Angler, 1888, "In Quest of Grayling."

Evening Post, 1888, "A Yankee in Canada."

Forest and Stream, December 20, 1888, "Super Sense of Animals ;" November 11,

1889, "Dogs of the Circumpolar World."
Charleston News, 1889, "The Voters' Milennium."
Raleigh News and Observer, 1889, "Qualified Suflrage."
New York Times, 1890, "Ocean to Ocean" (six papers).
Evening Post, 1880, "Lounging Along the Laurentides" (three papers).
Recreation, Washington, D. C, May, 1889, "Routes of the Russian Fur Trade."
Charles (S. C.) News, January, 1880, "Qualified Suffrage for All States."
New York Times, October, November, 1890, "Sketches of Montana" (six papers).
Sports Afield, 1891, "Midwinter Rambles in the Southwest" (six papers).
American Angler, October, 1801, "Memphremagog."

Goldthwaite's Geographical Magazine, May, 1891, "Distribution of Fishes by Under-
ground Streams."
New England Magazine, May, 1801, "Origin, Courses and Ethnography of the

Russian Fur Trade."
Newbern (N. C.) Journal, 1801 (Slocum Letters), "Sketches of Newbern" (twelve

in all).
Forest and Stream, 1892, "Winter Sports in North Carolina" (six papers), "The

Kootenay Country, British Columbia" (four papers), "Canoe Routes of the

Hudson Bay Company."
Evening Post, 1892, "Annapolis by the Sea."
Goldthwaite's Magazine, 1892, "Physiography of a Pocoson."
Forest and Stream, November, December, 1802, "Marooning in High Altitudes."
Iron Age, 1802, "Mesaba Iron Range" (Wisconsin).
Evening Post, 1893, "John Coona at Christmas."
Chicago Times, 1898, "The Princess and the Salmon."
Hampshire Gazette, 1803, "Old Hadley."
Evening Post, 1893, "The Ondawa" (Vermont) ; July 8, 1893, "A Boreal Arcadia;"

September, 1893, "An Arctic Summer Trip" (Mackenzie River).
D. K. E. Quarterly, December, 1803, "Old Times in Achaia."
Sportsmen's Review, 1804, "Old Kaat of Kaaterskill Clove."

Government Print, Washington, D. C, "Monograph of the Reindeer" (Agr. Dept.).
New England Magazine, February, 1804, "A Gentleman's Estate."
Forest and Stream, 1895, "The Pamlico Section" (six papers), "Christmas on the

Rio Grande."
Sportsmen's Review, 1895, "A June Rise on the Godbout."
Railway Age, 1895, "First Railroad Train in Florida."
Evening Post, 1806, "Red Lake Reservation."
Minneapolis Journal, 1806, "Game of Minnesota."

Sportsmen's Review, 1606, "Trip Over Mountain Tops" (North Carolina).
Samuels & Kimball, Boston, 1807, "Cape Cod Way."
Forest and Stream, 1890, "On the Godbout, P. Q." (three papers.)
Raleigh News, 1808, "White Supremacy;" 1800, "The World's Greatest Explorer."
Mobile Register, 1900, "The Mobile Awakening" (five papers).
American Angler, 1000, "On the Nepigon," "Detroit and Pelican Lakes."
Fayetteville Observer, 1000, "Ancestral Homes of Our Negroes."

134 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES.

Hampshire Gazette, 1900, "Courtship of Queen Victoria."

Jacksonville Times-Union, 1900, "St. Augustine Vestibuled Train Forty Years Ago."
Nature's Realm, 1900, "First American Zoo;" 1901, "The Bison's Paradise."
Mobile Register, 1902, "Ice Architecture and Winter Carnivals."
American Sportsman, 1909, "The Bison as a Factor in Distributing Population."
Southold Traveler, 1909, "Eastern Long Island," "Ancient Landmarks," "Respect
for Elders."

Newspaper Work.

New Haven Register Editor

New York Journal of Commerce "

Augusta (Ga!) Chronicle and Senitinel • "

Bermuda Royal Gazette "

Halifax (N. S.) Journal Correspondent

Halifax (N. S.) Citizen

St. John (N. B.) Telegraph Editor

St. John (N. B.) Courier .'

St. John (N. B.) Humorist

New York American Angler

New York Nature's Realm

New York Forest and Stream

St. Paul Field and Stream

St. Paul Pioneer Press Correspondent

New York Evening Post • "

New York Times .' "

Sportsmen's Review "

Harper's Weekly Editor (1868)

Mem. — Newspaper work fills two scrap books of ledger size.

Railroad Work,

Worked up resources of Texas, Missouri, Michigan, Eastern Virginia, Tide-
water North Carolina, Maritime Provinces, Minnesota, Idaho, Montana, Alaska,
North Dakota, Manitoba, California, Western North Carolina and other states on
the lines of Canadian Pacific, Missouri Pacific, Northern Pacific, Norfolk & Southern,
Chesapeake & Ohio, Grand Rapids & Indiana, Chicago & Northwestern and Chicago,
Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroads.

Escapes and Deliverances of Charles Hallock.

1. Wife and I derailed at pitch-dark midnight in West Virginia, one foot from
Gurley River chasm, 90 feet deep.

2. Caught in a narrow rock cut at Kanawha Falls, W. Va., with an express train
dashing through.

3. Run away with down hill at Lake Saltonstall, near New Haven, Conn., and
saved by a miracle from plunging into deep water.

4. Derailed and train wrecked at midnight at Lyme, Conn.

5. Similar accident the next winter at Fort Worth, Tex.

6. Upset in Mississippi River at St, Paul. Money loss, $1,000.

7. Run away with down Mt. Holyoke, Mass., and buggy smashed to atoms.

8. Fell forty feet from top of hemlock at Plaineld, Mass., and saved from being
dashed on a rock below by an interposing dead limb which did not break.

RECORD OF LIFE WORK FOR FIFTY-EIGHT YEARS. 185

9. Saved from drowning at New Haven while bathing by Richard Sewcll. Saiik
twice.

10. Steamer disabled by broken piston on Pacific coast. Half a revolution more
would have driven the piston through the bottom. On lone island ten days.

11. Lightning struck Coliseum at Minneapolis, Minn., during Theodore Thomas'
concert while wife was in it.

IQ. Lightning struck and wrecked home in Kingston, Canada, while 1 was in it.
13, 14. Three times lightniitg struck within a few feet of us both.

15. Narrow escape at Newbern, N. C.

16. Rusty nail in knee cap had to be pulled out by blacksmith's forceps. Three
months on crutches. Narrow escape from lockjaw.

17. Cannon burst and injured left hand, cutting cords.

18. Three-horse team swamped while crossing Sauk River, Minnesota, during flood.
Everything lost.

19. Schooner driven through a shoal of rocky (Magdalen) islands in Gulf of St.
Lawrence, during tremendous gale, without striking.

20. 21, 22. Artery of left wrist cut. Pitch fork tine in left instep. Wire file in

palm of left hand. All serious and endangering life from lockjaw.

23. Jaw broken and eight teeth knocked out by blow from a ruffian at Coney
Island, N. Y.

24. Ran blockade from Wilmington, N. C, under fire, without injury, in 1868.

25. Ran picket lines of both armies from Maryland to Virginia across Potomac and
Rappahannock, in February, 1863.

26. Fell on back in Mill Stream while trout fishing. Laid up one month.

27. Fell on depot floor, Northampton, July 18, 1&02. Sore for a month afterwards.

28. Put out head on Brooklyn elevated station platform to see if train was coming
on the instant that express train dashed by. A fraction of a second sooner
would have my brains scattered over the platform.

Mem. — God's mercy has been great! Must have spared me for some good
reason. Perhaps for some good purpose?

(Signed) Charles Hallock, August 1, 1909.

Summary.

Copyrighted books 17

Magazine articles 45

Monographs 110

Occupations and experiments outside of newspaper work 67

Correspondent and editor newspapers 15

Hairbreadth escapes ^ 28

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